Summit Park resident Haeli Hauritz and her husband, Tyler Greg, were just approaching a trailhead while on vacation in Austin, Texas, when she saw she had a missed call from her brother, who lives near the area.
Read update: Crews on ‘high level of alert’ as they combat high winds in Parleys Canyon Fire on Tuesday
“He called me immediately back and I got it, and he says, ‘I went to go to lunch. But an officer stopped me and said that they’re evacuating the area,’” said Hauritz, who is on her way back home from Texas. “‘What do you want me to grab?’ And I kind of just blanked, because I never thought that I wouldn’t be there if that happened.”
On Aug. 14, the Parley’s Canyon Fire forced thousands of evacuations in Summit Park, Pinebrook, Lamb’s Canyon and the upper Mill Creek canyon areas. At least 6-8,000 homes were threatened by the blaze, which early estimates put at over 2,000 acres in the mountains between Salt Lake and Summit counties. More accurate mapping on Monday put the fire at 539 acres with about 10% containment.
Hauritz and her husband had just moved to the Summit Park area in mid-May. Hauritz’s mother almost had to evacuate due to the Neffs Fire last year, and that, along with the earthquake in March 2020, prompted Hauritz to put together a go-bag so she would be prepared for future emergencies, but she never expected she wouldn’t be home when something like this happened.
“I basically just told [my brother] to get our dogs [and our cat] and get out,” Hauritz said. “He grabbed our backpacks and a couple of mementos on the way out, and that was about it.”
Hauritz’s pets and brother are staying at her in-laws’ home for the time being, which is where they’ll be headed when they return, since they’re still being told to stay away from their home.
“Right now we feel a lot more optimistic than we did when it first started, because there were reports of it traveling very fast — it was 2,000 acres in roughly three hours — and so I was thinking we were going to come back to no house,” Hauritz said. “But with the new reports of it being closer to 500 acres, right now and... starting to get contained, it feels a little a little better.”
Hauritz and Greg are thankful for all the work support crews are doing to fight the blaze, especially one firefighter — a friend of someone they know — who had been relaying clear information to them over the past few days.
“We talked about [coming back earlier,] but didn’t think it would change anything, because even if we were there, there’s nothing we can do about the fire,” Hauritz said. “It made our trip kind of hard to enjoy, and we were always refreshing the Twitter feeds.”
Andrew Smith has lived in Summit Park for nearly five years. Another wildfire, further down Parleys Canyon, had given Smith and his wife a trial run on evacuation a few years ago — they didn’t actually have to evacuate that time, but did practice on grabbing personal items in a rush. The couple first noticed Saturday’s fire on their way home.
“We were coming home from Salt Lake, and we’re going up the canyon. At about the base of the canyon we saw highway patrolmen trying to get all the cars to move over to get up the canyon,” Smith said. “At that point, we didn’t notice what was going on, and as we started getting a little further up the canyon, we started noticing some smoke over the ridge line, and then when we got around the corner and towards where the fire was.”
“We got off at Summit Park and the first thing we did was start packing stuff,” Smith said.
For now, Smith, his wife and their cat are staying with a friend while keeping an eye on how the fire progresses. Since their home is right on the ridgeline, “every little step that the fire takes is kind of important to see.”
“Otherwise, we’ve just been having some microwavable meals and waiting things out,” Smith said.
Park City Peaks Hotel is offering an alternative for those who have been displaced by the fire and don’t have a place to stay.
The hotel has offered discounts for evacuees, charging $35 per night, which is usually the employee rate, to those who need shelter until they can safely return back to their homes, along with waiving their usual $25 per night pet fee. According to their reservation website, Park City Peaks Hotel room rates are usually from $149 per night.
On Sunday night, 68 of the hotel’s 127 rooms were booked with evacuees. Rayner said most of those individuals are staying again tonight.
“We’re a total community hotel. But what we’re doing and we were the first ones to do anything, and a lot of the other hotels were actually raising their rate, at this point. We had two individuals.. [who] were like thanking us at the front desk because they had stayed at a competitor hotel on Saturday evening, and they paid $500 a night. And that hotel, that’s typically what they charge for Sundance,” Rayner said.
“We were disgusted. I mean, we’re trying to help people out. You’re not trying to make money and gouge people during a crisis.”
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