Fire in small Tooele County town prompts evacuation

VERNON, Tooele County — A large fire Thursday destroyed two mobile homes and forced evacuations in the small town of Vernon.

The structure fire, likely started by a space heater in the back bedroom of one of the trailers, was reported about 10:30 a.m. near 40 N. Silversage. It spread to two adjacent homes; one completely burned down and the other was heavily damaged.

The fire threatened several nearby propane tanks, prompting the hourlong evacuation. There were no injuries.

It started in the home of Steven Davis, 21, and his girlfriend, Desirae Miller, 19, who was watching their 4-month-old daughter and a 5-year-old girl.

Davis had just left to feed a friend's cows when he ran into a member of the town's ambulance crew, who told him his home was on fire.

"My girlfriend saw smoke coming from the back bedroom," Davis said. "She opened the door and saw flames."

The couple lost everything, including a dog. Next-door neighbor Thom Larsen, 60, said he lost "everything but my guns."

Larsen was at the nearby Silver Sage Cafe when his neighbor ran in and alerted him of the blaze. He grabbed his hose, but it was clogged by ice.

"There was glass breaking when I went inside (my trailer)," he said. "I was afraid if I went down the hallway I would get trapped."

Larsen said what he lost was "just stuff," and he was most upset about having lost all the paperwork for his taxes, which he had just worked on for four days.

Davis, too, put his losses in perspective.

"All this can be replaced," he said, looking at the ashes of his home. "A life cannot."

The Vernon Fire Department is an all-volunteer, nine-person force.

Fire Chief Nicky Higgins, a retired security director at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Tooele, said that with volunteers coming from as far away as Dugway, an hour away, they had to rely on help from nearby departments like Tooele and North Tooele. By the time those crews arrived with larger water cannons, little could be done.

"If we had that kind of thing, we would've been great," Higgins said.

Crews from Stockton, Rush Valley, Eureka and the Tooele Army Depot also responded.

Vernon is about 7 square miles in size and is located south and west of Eagle Mountain.

e-mail: pkoepp@desnews.com