Public safety recognitions

Congratulations to the Mapleton Fire Department for being named the Best Fire Department in Utah Valley in the Daily Herald’s 2023 Reader’s Choice Awards. This honor is well-deserved, and we are proud of their hard work in our community.

The Mapleton Police Department also received third place in the Best Police Department category. There wasn’t a Best Police Dog category, but if there was, we know Nyx would have come out on top. Nyx has been an excellent addition to our Police Department, and we love watching her, Officer Hatch, and all of our officers engage with our community.

The Mapleton Fire Department’s average response time to a resident’s 911 call is about 5 minutes 30 seconds from dispatch to the first unit arriving on scene. In these urgent situations, where every second matters, they continue to miraculously save homes and lives.

They were also recognized by the Red Cross earlier this year for overseeing the donation of 239 pints of blood in 2022.

On May 18, the Mapleton Fire Department hosted a planning meeting and site visit with the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), cooperators from Utah County Emergency Management (EM), and the National Weather Service (NWS). Mapleton was awarded a 100% federally funded “Silver Jackets” EAP program valued at over $150,000 to plan and facilitate collaborative solutions to our local flood risks.

The meetings focused on the citywide planning of comprehensive flood risks, including flood after fire debris flows from the Ether Hollow Fire burn scar. This will produce updated flood risk maps on Ether Hollow as well as potential flood modeling/maps for all of our major drainages in Mapleton.

A comprehensive flood EAP and study of this magnitude has never been conducted in our city. This project could not have been accomplished without the amazing work put in by Elizabeth Dionne from the Sacramento office of USACE.

We are also very thankful for all of our friends at NWS, FEMA, DEM, Utah County EM, Mapleton Police Department and Mapleton Public Works Department for their assistance on this project.

This project comes in on the heels of a $300,000 FFSL/USFS-funded fuel reduction award that was started in Mapleton during 2021. Mapleton Fire is always looking to find creative and cost-effective ways to make our communities safer.

If you see members of our public safety departments around town, please thank them for the good they bring to Mapleton.