Ammo-caused fire burns 11 acres at Iron County Shooting Range

IRON COUNTY — An ammunition-caused fire burned 11 acres at the Iron County Shooting Range on Friday night.

Cedar City Fire Chief Mike Phillips, who was the incident commander for the fire, said it was started by target shooters.

Either the shooters themselves or someone else at the range called 911 at 6:41 p.m. to report the fire, he said.

Units responding to the scene included three brush trucks and one tender from Cedar City Fire Department, an overhead and a bulldozer from the Bureau of Land Management and an engine from Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

Temperatures were in the mid-40s, which was beneficial to the firefighters, Phillips said.

“The light winds out of the north and the cooler weather was definitely helpful. And we’re receiving rain out on the fire right now, so that’s even better.” Phillips told Cedar City News as he was getting ready to leave the scene shortly after 8:30 p.m.

Scene of a fire that burned 11 acres at the Iron County Shooting Range near Cedar City, Utah, April 16, 2021 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News

At that point, the fire was considered contained and crews were taking care of hot spots, the chief added.

“Unless it rains really hard, they’ll be there for a couple more hours,” he said.

As to whether the shooters were using illegal ammunition or targets, Phillips said that is still undetermined.

“We know it started from shooting,” he said. “We just we don’t know if they were shooting tracer rounds or shooting at explosive targets. We’ve still got to investigate that.”

This report is based on preliminary information provided by fire officials and may not contain the full scope of findings.

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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2021, all rights reserved.

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