{"id":39140,"date":"2022-08-02T21:03:08","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T03:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/utah-man-accused-of-causing-wildfire-by-burning-a-spider\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:48:10","slug":"utah-man-accused-of-causing-wildfire-by-burning-a-spider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/utah-man-accused-of-causing-wildfire-by-burning-a-spider\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah man accused of causing wildfire by burning a spider"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Firefighters
Firefighters battle a wildfire from the ground as a helicopter drops water above them in Springville on Aug. 1. The fire started when a man tried to burn a spider with a lighter. (Kristin Murphy\/The Deseret News via AP)<\/span>Kristin Murphy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SALT LAKE CITY \u2013 A Utah man has been arrested on accusations he started a wildfire while trying to burn a spider with his lighter.<\/p>\n

Cory Allan Martin, 26, told deputies that he spotted the spider Monday while he was in a hiking area in the foothills south of Salt Lake City near the city of Springville, shows a probable cause statement. He acknowledged starting the fire, but didn’t explain why he was trying to burn the spider.<\/p>\n

Deputies found a jar of marijuana in his belongings, but he didn\u2019t appear to be high, said Utah County Sheriff\u2019s Sgt. Spencer Cannon.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence to suggest he intentionally started the blaze, said Cannon, but he called it a reckless and puzzling decision. This area and most of Utah are bone dry amid extreme drought conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat led him to stop and notice a spider and decide to try to burn it, we don\u2019t know,\u201d Cannon said. \u201cThere may not be a why. He might not even know a why.”<\/p>\n

Martin was arrested on suspicion of reckless burn and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, court documents show.<\/p>\n

He was in the Utah County jail Tuesday on nearly $2,000 bail. It was unknown if he had an attorney.<\/p>\n

The wildfire quickly spread up the mountain and had burned less than 1 square mile (1 square kilometer) as of Tuesday, according to fire officials. No homes had been damaged.<\/p>\n

\"Quinn
Quinn Smith and her father, David Smith, watch a helicopter take off as firefighters battle a wildfire in Springville on Monday. A Utah man has been arrested on accusations he started a wildfire while trying to burn a spider with his lighter. (Kristin Murphy\/The Deseret News via AP)<\/span>Kristin Murphy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firefighters battle a wildfire from the ground as a helicopter drops water above them in Springville on Aug. 1. The fire started when a man tried to burn a spider with a lighter. (Kristin Murphy\/The Deseret News via AP)Kristin Murphy SALT LAKE CITY \u2013 A Utah man has been arrested on accusations he started a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[121,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-utah","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84232,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39140\/revisions\/84232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39140"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}