On the same day that the red flag warning was announced, Utah<\/a> governor Spencer Cox has announced a state of emergency and accompanying temporary prohibition on the use of personal fireworks until 5 July. The announcement comes as the state experiences an unprecedented wildfire season with blazes that have prompted evacuations in Eureka, a small town about 80 miles (130km) south of Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n Under the governor\u2019s executive order, the state forester is allowed to ban the use of fireworks anywhere in the state. The order temporarily suspends a 2024 law<\/a> that disallowed the forester from banning fireworks in cities across the state.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about taking decisions away from local communities. In fact, we want to put local knowledge at the center of this process,\u201d Cox said during a Thursday press conference.<\/p>\n The Iron fire burns outside near Eureka, Utah, at the weekend. Photograph: Kelly Wickens\/Utah forestry fire state lands\/AP<\/p>\n He added that while the state\u2019s default position is that fireworks are prohibited, local fire chiefs and officials can still designate places where fireworks are allowed, if the hot, dry and windy conditions that are fueling the fires allow for it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think this strikes the right balance,\u201d Cox said.<\/p>\n As of Friday, Utah had nine active wildfires burning across more than 143,000 acres, according to the state\u2019s wildfire dashboard<\/a>. So far this year, Utah has had 373 wildfires<\/a>. All but 100 of them have been caused by humans.<\/p>\n Among the current blazes is the Cottonwood fire, which officials discovered on Monday and was described by Cox as the most destructive fire in the state\u2019s history. So far, it has burned nearly 72,000 acres and is at 0% containment, according to Utah fire info. It has also forced the closure<\/a> of Eagle point ski resort and damaged several structures surrounding it.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter | Around 2-3 times a day<\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News US<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In addition to struggling to tamp down new ignitions, billowing smoke continues to blanket surrounding areas. And smoke columns remain high enough to be seen from around the state, affecting air quality at popular vacation spots such as Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks \u2013 located far south of the flames.<\/p>\n More fire danger is expected as a heatwave blankets the west coast of the US, with troubling conditions for states such as Colorado<\/a> and Arizona<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Salt Lake City\u2019s National Weather Service declared a \u201cparticularly dangerous situation red flag warning\u201d, the first in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-728400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782483732_529_2998.jpg\")
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