It was a routine Saturday morning in the Avenues neighborhood of Salt Lake City when Paisley Rekdal took her dogs for a walk.
She’d heard whispers of a fire on social media and knew the season was expected to be especially dangerous. But the idea that a wildfire could upend her own life still felt far away.
“My first impulse was actually to take a picture of it,” she said.
Rekdal was in the process of moving and wasn’t aware of how bad the fire got until later, when she saw billowing smoke as she was carrying boxes out to her car.
“I started, like I said, seeing neighbors come out and you know, people I hadn't ever talked to, and we were standing in the street, and we're talking to each other, and trying to make sense of it together.”
The Bonneville Fire started June 20, directly to the east of the University of Utah, where it raced up the hills and burned 566 acres. Since it started, Rekdal said she found it difficult to sleep and breathe and has felt a constant sense of stress.
“You worry that you're overreacting, and then you worry that you're underreacting,” she said. “So, it's hard to figure out what to do, because we're just in this incredibly new normal, where nothing feels normal, and any response that you would normally have now has to be questioned.”
The psychological toll of wildfires is an emerging area of research. And considering devastating fires like those in Maui in 2023 and the Palisades in 2025, researchers like Amanda Bakian are working to understand the long-term impacts.
Bakian, a psychiatric researcher for the Huntsman Mental Health Institute, said the fire’s damage goes beyond the flames themselves. Smoke and particles released into the air can have major health effects, “which can also impact your mind, because that air pollution either directly affects your lungs, which causes trickle-down effects that travel to your brain, or you actually inhale those air plumes directly into your brain, and can cause some damage.”
In her first study in Salt Lake County, she looked at wintertime inversions and summer wildfires, and found a relationship between short-term exposure to fine particle matter and a higher? risk of suicide.
She also noted people’s innate fear when large fires are close, which compounds the effects of the poor air quality.
“We also know that that type of acute stress can also have negative impacts on your mental health, so there are probably multiple things happening there, and that they can interact together, and they can worsen one of those exposures,” she said.
Utahns across the state are seeing or feeling the effects of wildfire. The Iron Fire, in Juab County, has burned more than 37,000 acres and forced evacuations in Eureka; residents are only now being allowed to return home. The Cottonwood Fire in southern Utah has grown to over 61,000 acres and is uncontained.
The Bonneville Fire is now 95% contained, but still burning in spots almost a week later. The Bonneville Shoreline, Red Butte Canyon and Dry Gulch trails are still closed. Nearby residents can see the blackened hillsides and detect smoke from time to time.
For Rekdal, the only way to calm her nerves was to prepare to leave on the spot if told to.
“So I found myself running around, making sure I knew where my documents were, getting, you know, medications together, getting everything ready to go, just in case I had to,” she said.
She also made electronic copies of her important documents, explaining that feeling prepared helped her cope with her stress.
This mirrored Bakian’s advice, who said being prepared is key to reducing stress. Her primary research, though, is on the physical impacts of air pollutants on mental health, and she has other advice on how to combat that – like wearing a mask.
“So, the same masks that we were wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, they actually do a pretty good job at filtering these air pollutants, right?” she said.
Rekdal’s experience has taught her the importance of preparedness regardless of how unlikely you think fire is to impact your home.
“When you see the Palisade fires, you see the other kinds of fires that destroy whole communities. You think this is really possible. It's possible anywhere, and so then you have to start thinking, ‘Well, am I prepared to leave very quickly?’”
