Crews continued fighting a North Ogden fire Friday that has burned more than 577 acres, threatened homes and forced evacuations — a blaze officials say would have been best named the Ben Lomond Fire.
However, that name was already taken, so the second-closest landmark, Willard Peak, was used instead.
The Willard Peak Fire ignited Wednesday. Residents who were evacuated from their homes returned Thursday night, fire officials said in a Friday post on the social media platform X.
Fire names, said Sierra Hellstrom, spokesperson for the Northern Utah Type 3 Incident Management Team, must be unique in the system that crews use to track them. “We have a lot of fires,” Hellstrom said. “If a name is already in use, it cannot be duplicated.”
Hellstrom said the fire’s name has caused some confusion among the public, which is why she said people should always consider both a fire’s name and its actual location. A similar mix-up occurred a few years ago when a blaze in Dixie National Forest was called the West Valley Fire, prompting concern from residents in West Valley City even though the fire was nowhere near them.
“It’s important that people be a critical consumer of the information,” she said. “Yes, the fire name often helps indicate a proximity to a location, but it is not always an indicator of an actual location.”