By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondnet
The county may need to adopt a fire protection standard for small outbuildings.
Coy Porter, State Fire Marshal, attended Juab County Commission to discuss a possible wildland ordinance which commissioners could adopt.
"This ordinance can be made by the county without any action from the state," said Porter. "These changes have been approved by the state forester."
He said that counties had the authority to adopt all of the changes, some of them or none of them.
"It is our recommendation to adopt all of them," said Porter.
Brett Ostler, county fire marshal, said that Juab County did not have a lot of requests for such small structures out on the range land.
"I will present this information to the county fire board," he said.
Porter explained that many ranchers like to build the small structures to aid them with their ranching and farming needs.
The new state standards would affect any structure that was no more than 1,000 square feet with the required defensible space and without a reasonable access to a municipal or similar water system.
It could also affect a structure that originally did not exceed 1,000 square feet when adding an addition of 25 percent or less to the total square footage.
"One of the issues that have been specifically noted," said Porter, "is that it (the older requirement) is overly restrictive to the construction of small structures like a line shack a rancher may use during the lambing or calfing seasons," he said.
A line shack refers to a small cabin or outbuilding built on the open range where cowboys may take shelter or where ranchers needing to stay on the land for a short time may stay to oversee operations, such as lambing.
In the past, there have been state restrictions placed on such structures.
"We are trying to protect the forest from a cabin fire not trying to protect the cabin from a forest fire," said Porter.
One of those past requirements has been access to water which was required to be available in order to fight a fire. If the exception to the water access clause is granted, a defensible space around the structure is still required.
An adequate water supply is needed for the initial attack and flame front control by the local jurisdiction. The term, "shall be determined…by the local jurisdiction," gives the ability to set water supply requirements based on individual needs.
Some jurisdictions, he said, may require full fire flow but in other jurisdictions, in the more remote areas of the county, the water supply may rely solely on the water carried to the fire scene by the fire fighters.
As to the difference between water supply for structures without exposure hazards and structures with exposure hazards, he said, a structure within 50 feet of another building and 100 square feet or larger in area is defined as a fire hazard area.
"The minimum water supply requirement for structures without exposure hazards cannot be less than 2,000 gallons," said Porter. "A 2,500 square foot, single family dwelling with eight-foot ceilings would require 2,857 gallons of water supply."
The minimum supply for structures with exposure hazards requires 3,000 gallons, minimum. The same 2,500 square foot building would require 4,286 gallons of water for fire fighting purposes.
"As you can see, it is difficult to set one water supply requirement for the entire wildland-urban interface for your jurisdiction," Porter said.
One way to approach this need for water is to calculate the maximum size structure that could be built, based on the maximum amount of water the fire department can provide at the scene.
On-site reservoirs and cisterns have not proven effective in Utah, he said. Therefore, a jurisdiction should give serious consideration before allowing these sources as an acceptable water supply.
In order to have an approved permit the plan must be acceptable to the building official, fire official or authority having jurisdiction. Approval can come, if the ordinance is adopted, if the building official, fire official or the authority having jurisdiction, all sign off on the plan.
Individual structures must have approved fire apparatus roads which means that the roads must be able to convey fire fighting equipment to a possible fire. It does not mean that the road must have a hard surface, all-weather road finish, as has been required in the past.
Porter said that access, via fire apparatus access roads, has been one of the key issues because, in the past, the access roads were required to be constructed with an all-weather surface.
However, as much of the wildland-urban interface is under snow for much of the year, the requirement for an all-weather surface did not always make much sense since those roads would not be plowed during that period of time.
"One of the changes being recommended to the Wildland-Urban Interface code is to remove the term 'all weather' and replace it with 'approved' road," said Porter.
Many of the roads in the wildland are not intended to be open all year long. Constructing roads to be plowed when it is not the intention to plow them is an unneeded expense and serves no purpose, he said.
"It is the intent to have roads designed and built to accommodate the wildland fire fighting apparatus," he said.
Roads that have been used many times to get fire fighting equipment into areas would not need to be engineered which would also save money.
He said that defensible space is defined as an area either natural or man-made, where material capable of allowing fire to spread unchecked has been treated, cleared or modified to slow the rate and intensity of an advancing wildfire and to create an area for fire suppression operation to occur.
That defensible space does not include a clear cut around a structure, a fire break, devastation of the forest or removal of all vegetation.
He suggested the commission might want to make the changes he had presented in their own county codes which would allow line shacks to be built in the more remote areas of the county.
