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Show BLM Lifts Area Fire Closure Over the Fourth of July, Bureau of Land Management crews and equipment were busy fighting the Meadow Spring fire and several others in the west desert. However, recent rains have changed the fire situation and on July 14, the BLM lifted the fire closure that went into place at the end of June. BLM's Fire Management Officer Offi-cer Dave Bott said, "We'd like to thank people for their cooperation with the fire closure over the July 4th weekend. Things could have been much worse with those high winds and dry conditions. Multiple fire ignitions would have been difficult diffi-cult to handle as resources were already committed to several ongoing on-going fires." "Although the vegetation is still very dry, the humidity which was 7-14 percent the first of July has now risen to 14-25 percent which lessens the rate of spread of fire in grasses and light fuels. This moderates mod-erates fire behavior and allows normal nor-mal activities to occur with less threat of ignition from sparks from catalytic converters, cigarettes, and illegal fireworks," said Bott. 'Td still like to caution people to continue to be careful with fires when traveling and camping in southwestern Utah. We still have a month and a half of warm, dry conditions. con-ditions. We could still get big fires if the moisture ends and the range dries out," said Bott. According to Bott, the fuel moisture levels in sage, pinyon and juniper are slow to respond to the recent moisture and still pose a fire problem as the weather warms and dries out. On July 14, the Cedar City District Dis-trict Manager of the Bureau of Land Management rescinds the Stage I Fire Restriction of Open Burning, Campfires, Smoking and Fireworks on public lands within the Cedar City District (including the Grand Staircase-Escalante . National Monument lands) which was put in place on June 30. |