$1.50 March 8, 2024 | Vol. 3 Iss. 08
See Inside...
Trio of basketball players spotlighted
MORGAN COUNTY NEWS
Junior standouts on the Morgan boys basketball team receive kudos.
page 5
Covering Your Community Since 1929
Sprinkler systems required for new larger homes in Morgan County By Linda Petersen
Nikki Haley suspends her campaign
M
organ County has enacted a new ordinance which requires new homes greater than 3,600 square feet to have automatic fire sprinklers in all livable space and evacuation routes. The new provision applies only to homes in what is known as the urban-wildland interface area, which is basically all of the unincorporated county. “Morgan County has seen a rapid increase in new construction throughout the County, increasing the demands upon the County’s existing Morgan County Bureau of Fire Prevention Bureau (“MCBFP”) as well as decreasing the ability of its departments to rapidly and effectively respond to fires; and the Morgan County Commission has determined that changes to the Fire Code are necessary to better provide for the fire protection needs of the MCBFP in an effort to better protect the health, safety, and welfare of its residents,” the ordinance says. “Automatic fire sprinkler systems have been proven to significantly reduce the likelihood of injury and death to occupants and firefighters as well as limit the likelihood fire damage to the structures and the spreading of fires to other structures and property,” it says. At the Dec. 19 Morgan County Commission meeting where he presented the proposed change to them, Fire Chief Boyd Carrigan told the commissioners about a recent Mountain Green home fire which took 250,000 gallons of water and 67 manpower hours to extinguish. “If you take that same home if it would have had sprinklers, it would have flowed 13 gallons a minute with … two 26-gallon heads so no more than 300 to 600 gallons of water would have either
NEWS BREAK
Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley was expected to suspend her campaign for the White House on Wednesday, according to NPR. The campaign announced planned remarks from Haley in Charleston at 10 a.m. ET, which is when she was expected to withdraw from the race.
Credit card late fees to be capped at $8
SPRINKLERS ARE REQUIRED for larger homes in Morgan County’s wildland urban interface, highlighted in yellow on this map.
Courtesy
put the fire out or slowed it down long enough that we could have got there and easily put it out,” he said. “We need to remember also that there's two threats to when fire erupts: the threat to the community when the fire moves from the vegetation to the neighboring homes. The second threat is structure fires.They threaten the community when there’s insufficient water supplies and fire moves from the structure to the vegetation and into the neighborhoods,” he said. Having adequate fire flow is a huge problem in much of Morgan County, he added. The 3,600-square-foot sprinkler threshold is a Utah Fire Code standard, Fire Warden Dave Vickers told the commissioners. “When we’re talking about fire load, homes under 3,600, when they burn they’re not going to put out as much heat, fire, all that other mitigating things as a larger home,” he said.
Enacting this provision allows smaller subdivisions such as four-lot subdivisions to be able to provide fire suppression that is economically feasible, he said. Sprinklers currently average $1.50 to $3 a square foot, he added. Smaller homes are exempted from this requirement unless the “Authority Having Jurisdiction determines there is a substantial public healthy or safety interest to require installation,” according to the ordinance. Existing homes under 3,600 square feet that add an extension would be able to address fire suppression in other ways such as installing fire walls and a fire-rated door on the addition, Carrigan told the commissioners at their Feb. 20 meeting where the ordinance change was adopted. Under the new ordinance, unfinished basements are considered livable space.l
The Biden administration announced that federal regulators are finalizing rules which would cap most credit card late fees at $8 in an attempt to eliminate “junk fees” for consumers. The caps will affect large credit card companies with at least 1 million accounts on their records. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, those companies are responsible for up to 95% of the total credit card debt held by Americans. The cap will go into effect soon, and should reduce the annual cost to consumers by an average of $220 a year.
Idaho Falls woman arrested for fentanyl after giving birth
According to Eastidahonews. com, an Idaho Falls woman was arrested after her newborn was tested for opiates and found to have fentanyl in its system. The woman, had been living in a camping trailer outside of town and using the illegal drug. She apparently had taken the drug on her way into delivery. Such an offense is punishable by jail time, and she was sentenced to three to seven years for the offense, given as a suspended sentence requiring 100 hours of community service a week, mandatory family treatment counseling, and restitution.
Illegal intestines seized by authorities
MMS FBLA members who placed at state.
MGMS FBLA member who placed at state.
Middle schools in Morgan are turning out Future Business Leaders of America By Verlene Johnson
N
early 60 middle school students from Morgan competed against 20 other middle schools and junior high schools from across the state in the FBLA State Competition, Feb. 27. Seventh and eighth graders from Morgan Middle School and Mountain Green Middle School traveled to Ogden to compete against students from seventh, eighth and ninth grade with students from both schools placing in the top five. MMS FBLA, led by Krachel Fullmer, competed for the second year. Alexis Clark placed first in FBLA Mission and Pledge. Abigail Hatch and Berkley Peterson placed second in Multime-
dia and Website Development. Aveley London and Ailee Rose placed fourth in Annual Chapter Report. Maeli London placed fourth in Career Exploration. Jerrett Weeter placed fifth in Career Exploration and Kendal Williams and Devyn Young placed fifth in Exploring Business Issues. “Lexi Clark practiced her presentation hundreds of times,” said Krachel. “I am so proud of all 26 students who stepped out of their comfort zone and did something brave.” MGMS’s inaugural year, led by Dustin Fullmer, also found success taking first place in Largest Increase in
FBLA on page 4
The Associated Press reported, in an unusual filing, that six people had been arrested in New York on charges of importing illegal goose and duck intestines from China. As if that weren’t odd enough, the contraband organ meat was sometimes hidden under packaged rattlesnakes, or mislabeled as pet grooming items on customs forms. Authorities report that 1,966 cartons of the intestines were shipped from China to the Port of Long Beach, where they passed through customs. They were discovered to be illegal intestines when they landed at JFK Airport in New York by an air carrier cargo service. Other than…what? the main question to come out of the incident is… wait a minute, you can mail rattlesnakes to people?
Daylight saving time begins on Sunday
LEXI CLARK placed first at state.
Are you prepared to spring forward one hour? Many studies show that the one-hour loss to daylight saving time can disrupt sleep rhythms for days, leading to cumulative sleep loss, according to NPR.