Utah County’s Saratoga Springs is the definition of being between a rock and a hard place. It’s a long and narrow city, squished by Lake Mountain on one side and Utah Lake on the other, with few roads in and out.
And after three fires in the area in the last week, people are worried about being able to leave if there’s a large-scale evacuation. Rebecca Winters lives on the south side of the city, where the main artery is Redwood Road.
“It's just really scary to me that, OK, there's one road pretty much out of here,” she said. “We call it ‘red light road.’ It's already hard enough to get out on a normal day.”
In 2020, Redwood turned into a parking lot, residents say, when the Knolls Fire caused almost 13,000 people to evacuate. Saratoga Springs Fire & Rescue said it was the largest evacuation in Utah history.
And city traffic is only getting worse. Saratoga Springs was the fastest-growing large city in Utah in 2023-2024, and fourth-fastest overall.
So a couple of weeks ago, Winters took matters into her own hands. She bought two rafts to fit her husband, two kids and two cats. Now, in a worst-case scenario, she can walk 15 minutes to escape via Utah Lake.
“We see that the traffic's backed up, we can get our kids and throw them in a boat and row to the other side where the relatives live,” she said. “And that's probably the safest option.”
They have life jackets, and she feels prepared for the dangers of Utah Lake.
Fire Chief Kenny Johnson praised Winters’ fire preparedness and creativity, but he thinks her plan is riskier than sitting in traffic. Fires usually happen during high winds, and Utah Lake can get large swells. Two teenagers died on Utah Lake during a windstorm in 2020, though they weren’t wearing life jackets.
Johnson gets residents’ fears and has some himself, but he also said his team’s planning and preparation have given him some peace of mind. Since the Knolls Fire, the city has expanded and widened some roads and created a better, more strategic evacuation system that prioritizes which neighborhoods to clear and when.
“I think that, that will put less people on the road at one point, instead of everybody being on the road at the same time,” he said. “Now you have certain streets or certain neighborhoods that are maybe closest to the fire evacuating first.”
The city will also be able to better notify residents through an alert system called Everbridge.
Resident Joe McOmber thinks the city hasn’t done enough. He would like an expansion of the Mountain View Corridor sooner rather than later. That would give residents a freeway along the west length of the city, but the Utah Department of Transportation doesn’t expect the first round of funding until 2031.
“I feel like the region has gotten lost in terms of being prioritized for roads,” McOmber said. “A lot of the funding seems to go to other places. I think the general feeling is the funding for those things has come a bit late.”
A spokesperson for UDOT said other traffic-easing projects in the area are a higher priority, like the 2100 North freeway project and creating flex lanes on Pioneer Crossing.
He would also like to see Redwood Road expanded to five lanes, but UDOT doesn't have a plan to do that at this point. There is a bridge across Utah Lake in the state’s long-range planning that McOmber favors, but it’s controversial. The nonprofit advocacy group Conserve Utah Valley believes it would harm the lake and that public transit would be a better traffic solution.
Winters also thinks a bridge is necessary, and she believes the city should hold up on more development until the infrastructure is up to par.
With planned roadwork and Utah’s updated Wildland Urban Interface Fire Code to make cities more resilient to wildfire, Fire Chief Johnson believes things will continue to improve. He also said the Saratoga Springs fire marshal has a seat at the table to talk about development and fire risk with the city, and the fire department is working on better community education.
“We can reduce fear and anxiety through planning and preparation,” the chief said. “As a community, we need to do that. And as individual property owners and homeowners, we need to do that. That can help us all, I think, sleep a little bit better.”
Johnson encourages people to make their homes more fire-resistant by getting rid of combustible items in the yard. He also recommends having a to-go bag ready in case of evacuation, planning more than one way out of the neighborhood and knowing where to meet up with loved ones.
Keeping an eye on the weather can also help. All of the evacuations in Saratoga Springs in the last 30 years have been during National Weather Service red flag warnings, he said. And if people are worried about a fire, they don’t have to wait for an evacuation order to leave.
