Moscow • Vladimir Putin says that the adoption of Christianity more than 1,000 years in territory that later became Russia marked the starting point for forming Russia itself.

Putin’s comments came Saturday in a ceremony marking the 1,030th anniversary of the adoption by Christianity by Prince Vladimir, the leader of Kievan Rus, a loose federation of Slavic tribes that preceded the Russian state.

Speaking to a crowd of thousands of clergy and believers at a huge statue of the prince outside the Kremlin, Putin said adopting Christianity was “the starting point for the formation and development of Russian statehood, the true spiritual birth of our ancestors, the determination of their identity. Identity, the flowering of national culture and education.”

The comments underline strong ties between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church.

At the same time, Russia has clamped down on other faiths, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.

Vatican City • Pope Francis has accepted U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick’s offer to resign from the College of Cardinals in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse, including one involving an 11-year-old boy, and ordered him to conduct a “life of prayer and penance” in a home to be designated by the pontiff until a church trial is held, the Vatican said Saturday.

Francis acted swiftly after receiving McCarrick’s letter of resignation Friday evening, after recent weeks have brought a spate of allegations that the 88-year-old prelate in the course of his clerical career had sexually abused both boys and adult seminarians. The revelations posed a test of the pontiff’s recently declared resolve to battle what he called a ‘’culture of cover-up” of similar abuse in the Catholic Church’s hierarchy.

McCarrick had been already removed from public ministry since June 20, pending a full investigation into allegations he fondled a teenager over 40 years ago in New York City. A man, who was 11 at the time of the first alleged instance of abuse, says a sexually abusive relationship continued for two more decades. McCarrick has denied the initial allegation.

The prelate rose steadily up the U.S. church’s ranks, from auxiliary bishop in New York City, to bishop in Metuchen, New Jersey, to archbishop of Newark, N.J., and then to archbishop of Washington, D.C., the city where the papal ambassador to the United States is based.

While most of the scandals involving pedophile clergy have involved rank-and-file priests, some cases involved bishops, and there are a few involving cardinals, including a current case in Australia of one of Pope Francis’ closest advisers, Cardinal George Pell, who now faces a criminal trial in his homeland.

In the case of Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, accused by former seminarians in 2013 of sexual misconduct, Francis only accepted his resignation after the Vatican’s top abuse prosecutor conducted a full investigation, two years after the first revelations came out.

But the Holy See’s announcement about McCarrick said that Francis was taking action, by isolating McCarrick and ordering penance even before “accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial.” In addition, Francis, ‘’ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry,” indicating he was approving the measure already in effect since last month.

A Catholic University canon law expert, Kurt Martens, noted that this was the first time an order of penance and prayer had been issued before a church trial could take place.

Since he is over 80, McCarrick was already no longer eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a pope. But being a ‘’prince of the church,” as cardinals are sometimes called, is a top honor of the church, and those elevated to that rank are called upon to advise the pope.

Bishops have been implicated in the sexual abuse scandals that have stained the Catholic Church’s reputation worldwide for decades now, but often for their roles in covering up for pedophile priests by shuffling them from parish to parish and keeping the faithful in the dark about the allegations about clergy whose pastoral duties often bring them into contact with minors.

Earlier this month, an Australia bishop became the most senior Roman Catholic cleric to be convicted of covering up child sex abuse. Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson was sentenced to 12 months in detention by an Australian court in a landmark case welcomed by some abuse survivors as a strong warning to institutions that fail to protect children.

Nicole Winfield contributed to this report.

I spent a recent Saturday night, much as I have for many years, at Rocky Mountain Raceways. The cars sped around the track, the noise filled my ears, the smell of the tires filled my nose, and my son played with his toy cars. I’ve long yearned for this opportunity to show him this place. Only this night, it wasn’t quite the same as before, because this time is one of my last visits to the raceway.

The announcement of the final season for RMR is a genuine loss for Utah and the passionate racing community we have. Visit other small tracks around the country and it quickly becomes apparent just what a top-quality facility RMR is. What is worse, the track closes because of a money grab. The track was not given the option to renew its lease. The land is more valuable as a warehouse than it is as a community gathering place. This is a shame, and the loss will be felt for years to come.

Soon the lights will go out on the track for the final time and nearly 50 years of racing history at this place will be lost. Also lost is the chance for me to take my son, the way my father took me. Being there has been a part of our lives for generations. This is not the way RMR should come to an end, and a gap will remain in our community because of it.

Lionel James Lewis, Sandy

I read Robert Kirby's tongue-in-cheek column "Hey, Ambassador Huntsman, I'll take over your Russian gig."

Putting all jokes aside, I thought Ambassador Jon Huntsman did a very dignified job, sitting on the first row beside first lady Melania Trump as they and a large pool of reporters listened to the recent joint news conference between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump. Although the media and segments of the public went berserk, I saw very little justification.

Pundits utter two words ad nauseam: "collusion" and "meddling". My goodness, everybody acknowledges that Bill Clinton and his now nearly defunct Clinton Foundation "meddled" in the election. The foundation has practically gone moribund since Hillary Clinton lost. I think most readers of The Salt Lake Tribune, myself included, can safely say that no Russian whispered in my ear as to “how to vote” in the 2016 presidential election.

I've met and talked with Ambassador Huntsman, and I'm glad he's our ambassador to Russia. He has a steady hand and is capable. We've come a long way since Sputnik and we should be glad to talk to the "Rooosh-kies," instead of the threatening Khrushchev style of banging shoes on podiums.

James A. Marples, Provo

LGBTQ group vice president Kimberly Anderson has reportedly quit over the LDS Church’s recent donation to help the at times socially beleaguered organization's desire to deal with the rising tide of suicides among many whose sexual proclivities and cultural attribution often create extreme stress in a society still too slow to accept their constitutional and humanistic right to be what they wish to be.

When a hand is extended in assistance, give the gesture a moment to consider the intent of the donor. True, a schism has long existed between her group's beliefs and rights and the local dominant church along with many other religious and ultraconservative entities throughout the nation.

However, her juvenile reaction is an insult to those who may differ with her personal conviction and just another ill-formed reason for those who oppose her group's lifestyle to consider their resistance and prejudice justified. It is this type of knee-jerk reaction and embedded lack of reasoning that will continue the aura of distrust and difficulty in bringing common sense into the rationale of diversity.

Ms. Anderson, if you want your organization to be a viable, sensible and maturely reacting group, stay the dramatic reactions and self-aggrandizing response.

James F. Oshust, Millcreek

Coming soon to a commute near you … even more advertising!

Gone are views of mountains, replaced with a dazzling array of constantly changing billboards along the major beverage corporation interstate (formerly I-15). Watch out for congestion around the pharmaceutical-sponsored interchange! Drive to your job near the exit now sponsored by a multilevel marketing company. Struggle to see the flashing emergency lights amid the auto dealership ads adorning the UDOT Incident Response vehicles!

Don't worry, UTA commuters — you get to join in the fun, too! Ride to work aboard the insurance-company-sponsored TRAX line. It only takes a bit of adjustment to remember the stations sponsored by a rotating cast of technology and food companies.

And please, don't drive distracted!

Michael Baker, Salt Lake City

Not too many years ago, we were told by our elected officials in the Utah Legislature that the state prison, occupying 1 square mile, was an obstacle to economic development and had to be relocated to facilitate growth in the Draper area.

Now we are being told by some of the same people that the "inland port" will be the biggest economic development opportunity in the history of the state of Utah! But wait, there's a contradiction here: The inland port is right next to the new state prison under construction.

You can't have it both ways. Let's have the courage to admit that we have made an absolutely terrible mistake, foisted upon a naive Legislature, and stop work at the prison site near the Great Salt Lake, sell the property and put our construction money into rebuilding the current prison at its desirable central location.

James King, Salt Lake City

It’s a symptom of our time that a tape of the future president of the United States discussing machinations related to an alleged affair with a former Playboy Playmate isn’t truly a blockbuster.

The brief snippet of conversation between Donald Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen about buying the story of former Playmate Karen McDougal, who says she had a 10-month affair with Trump beginning in 2006, is certainly of interest.

How often do you hear a future president speaking so frankly, if cryptically, about such a salacious matter? And the tape is part of the storyline of Cohen flipping against Trump that will be an ongoing media obsession.

But what would be a potential torpedo to the bow of any other presidency is a relative trifle, because tawdry scandals have been built into the Trump baseline.

Past presidents have needed fixers (John F. Kennedy had his at the top of the Justice Department, his brother Bobby) and have had shady associates (Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo; Bill Clinton and almost everyone he knew from Little Rock, it seemed).

Still, Trump’s relationship with Cohen, a lawyer so disreputable that no one else would want his representation, is off the charts. Q: What kind of lawyer tapes his client (as Trump has asked in recent days)? A: Cohen, whose lack of standards is what made him so useful in the first place.

The tape’s political effect is muted because everyone is dug in. Trump’s foes have already concluded that he’s unfit for office and needs to be removed forthwith; Trump’s supporters (most of them) acknowledge his serious shortcomings but think it’s more important to focus on his agenda and accomplishments. It’s difficult to find a further personal peccadillo that can budge anyone from these trench lines, since there’s no real contest over his character to begin with.

The irony is that Trump’s detractors hate him so much that they have created, perhaps, an impossibly high standard for his misconduct.

It’s not damning enough for them that the Russians interfered in our election and Trump is dismissive of it; Trump has to be a quasi-Russian agent who actively colluded with the Kremlin, perhaps going back decades. It’s not damning enough that Trump had affairs with a porn star and Playmate; he has to have committed some serious criminal offense in the course of covering his tracks.

For their part, Trump’s allies rarely make a personal defense of him, i.e., this man would never do such a thing. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani tried a version of this tack regarding Stormy Daniels a few weeks ago, but the crux of his argument was that she was supposedly not sophisticated enough for Trump.

When Giuliani says that the Cohen tape is exculpatory, he doesn’t mean that it proves there was nothing to the McDougal story and where does his client go to get his reputation back? He means that Trump was upfront and transparent about buying her story — he wanted to do it by check.

And that defense is enough. With Trump having delivered on important priorities for the right and enjoying a hysterical opposition that pushes Republicans toward him, the Fifth Avenue principle applies now more than ever. To update it for current circumstances, Trump could pay off Karen McDougal with a black satchel full of cash in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.

That Trump has denied the Daniels and McDougal stories is a normal tactic in an abnormal time. You wonder why he bothered, though, except that allegations from women were piling up in the weeks before the 2016 election and there are always poor Melania’s feelings to consider.

Perhaps there will be some inescapable legal dilemma for Trump that emerges out of the Cohen imbroglio. But the president has a very wide margin for error. The lesson of these controversies so far is that there’s nothing low expectations won’t do.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. comments.lowry@nationalreview.com

Eleven conservatives in the U.S. House have filed a motion to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Critics say it’s an outrage. Maybe so. But let’s not lose sight of how deeply weird the whole situation is.

The attempted impeachment of an executive-branch official is unusual, but there is constitutional provision and precedent for it. Some House Republicans tried to impeach John Koskinen, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service under President Barack Obama. The campaign to impeach Rosenstein is different because it is not a straightforward clash between a Congress and White House that oppose each other politically.

Rosenstein is the appointee of a president whom the would-be impeachers support. It’s essentially because they support Donald Trump so fervently that they want to impeach his deputy attorney general. They complain, for example, that Rosenstein is not sharing enough information about the Justice Department’s handling of Russia investigations with President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress.

Yet Trump does not need the House to impeach him. The president has the legal right to fire him at any time. As the head of the executive branch, Trump also has the power to order the declassification of any information he wants Congress to have. Yet instead Trump’s interventions have consisted of slagging Rosenstein in interviews and on Twitter.

“This isn’t normal” has become a cliché in commentary about the Trump administration. But we have focused too little on one of the most important and settled norms that Trump has flouted: the norm that the administration is an extension of the will of the president who heads it.

Republicans in particular have emphasized the idea that the Constitution vests all executive power in the president. The theorists say that a “unitary executive” is essential so that voters know whom to hold accountable for the executive branch’s performance, and so that voters’ choice of a president has the full effect that it should.

But disunity in the executive is a theme that runs through several recent controversies surrounding the Trump administration. The Helsinki meeting with Vladimir Putin and its aftermath showed the president to be isolated inside his own Cabinet.

Trump contradicted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats about whether Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and whether it would do it again. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis made a public defense of our alliance with Montenegro; Trump criticized that alliance.

This degree of public disagreement never occurred during, say, Bill Clinton’s presidency. The airing of even smaller disagreements would have been treated as a major problem for previous administrations, one resolved by a public display of unity behind a considered position set by the president. The Trump administration, by contrast, hardly tries to tamp down the cacophony.

He does not listen to his appointees, and in return they don’t try to give voice to his views. Whether he is opining about the Justice Department or Russian operations, Trump gets his information from Fox News. He doesn’t get it from the people he has put in charge of his law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering bureaucracies.

Last week, Trump mildly criticized the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates. Trump was criticized in turn for breaking the recent norm of presidential silence about Fed policy. What really stands out in his remarks, though, is that he was criticizing the policy of a Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, whom Trump himself had recently appointed.

Powell had been implementing that policy as a member of the Fed even before Trump made him chairman. If the president wanted a more dovish chairman, he could have appointed one. But instead of taking concerted action to bring about the policy he appears to want, he carps from the sidelines. It is as though he views his role as being the commenter-in-chief.

Asked about the Helsinki summit, Trump said that he considers Putin responsible for Russia’s interference in the U.S. election just as he considers himself “responsible for things that happen in this country.” Yet he often appears not to be in charge of even his own administration.

Just as the unitary-executive theorists would predict, a fragmented presidency has been, at least sometimes, an ineffective and unaccountable one. The administration’s family-separation policy was carried out chaotically, with different officials in the chain of command offering contradictory accounts of what the policy and its rationale were.

Trump’s partisans say that he is being undermined. But what really differentiates this presidency from others is not how much the permanent bureaucracy has been resisting his agenda. It’s how little effort the president puts into translating his goals into purposeful and unified executive action. The “deep state” is largely a myth. The shallow presidency is real.

With President Donald Trump in the White House, everything seems under assault. Civil rights, the rule of law, our moral standing, the global liberal democratic order the United States spent decades, blood and treasure helping to form and maintain. It’s all so precarious, unsettled and unprecedented. But is it, really?

During the pilgrimage with the Faith & Politics Institute last weekend to western New York state and the landmarks of the abolition and women’s suffrage movements that were centered there, we were reminded that these dark days are neither new nor insurmountable. The scene was a panel I moderated with Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., and two history professors.

My question for the historians was simple: While things aren’t nearly as bad as they were when the nation grappled with women’s rights and slavery (and fought a war over the latter), things are pretty bad. What historical lessons or wisdom from those tumultuous movements could Maloney and Reed take back to today’s tumultuous Washington?

“I’m not as quick as the rest of you to say things aren’t as bad as they were,” said Lori Ginzberg, a professor of history and women’s studies at Penn State. She was quick to note the end of slavery in the United States and the many advances for men and women since, but imparted a lesson that she said she tells her students all the time. “You have to get over the idea that things were really bad in the past, but now we’ve achieved [progress],” Ginzberg recounted. “We are not all the latest, most progressive, most advanced humans on the planet that ever could be. And our problems are as severe in their ways, in different ways.”

“History is never over,” admonished David Blight. The Yale history professor is an expert on the life of Frederick Douglass. Blight’s 900-page tome on the escaped slave and “Prophet of Freedom” whose oratory made him famous and the most photographed man of his time comes out in the fall. Blight explained that it is an American tendency to think that history is a story of relentless progress. “Ask the Russians if history is all progress,” he said. “Ask the Germans if history is [all] progress.”

“We have this obsession in America, with lots of ideas and not without reason, that somehow our history is always getting better. It’s always on an escalator that somehow ends up going up," Blight continued. Then he said this: “I love [former president Barack] Obama, but every time he used that famous quote that he always used about ‘the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,’ I used to say, ‘No, it’s not!’ It doesn’t always.” Acknowledging the power of the phrase that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. paraphrased from an 1853 sermon by Theodore Parker, Blight added, “History is full of just as many examples of where it did not bend toward justice. It really bends the other way and it stayed that way for a while.”

With everything happening in our country today, it certainly feels as if that arc is bending the other way. But Blight counseled taking the long view. In doing so, he referenced James Baldwin’s famous 1961 interview with Studs Terkel. Bemoaning a lack of a sense of history on the part of Southern politicians during the civil rights movement, Baldwin said, “If you don’t know what happened behind you, you’ve no idea of what is happening around you.”

Riffing off Baldwin, Blight said, “Almost nothing can happen that hasn’t happened before.” Therefore, he went on to say, we have an “obligation” to learn about the past if only to be prepared for the shocks to come. And then he presented a powerful parallel. “The only way you’ll ever be prepared for what may happen to you, whether it’s 9/11 or something else, is because you’ll know that 9/11 also happened in the Trojan War and a thousand other times.”

These Faith & Politics pilgrimages are physically and emotionally exhausting. From walking in the footsteps of civil rights marchers to standing in the homes and at the gravesites of people we now revere as heroes, I am reminded at every turn that ordinary people with courage and conviction did extraordinary things for our country. A point driven home by Ginzberg.

“I think that then as now, grassroots organizing is the key to making real social change. … Politicians make changes because there are movements, some of which take extreme positions, that push them,” the Penn State professor said. “What those movements do is they push ideas onto the agenda and make them legitimate and move things in a direction that can actually result in political change.”

As I argued in my previous post, folks, stop wondering who’s going to save us from Trump. “You stand ready at the door of greatness,” the poet Nathan Richardson reminds us. All we have to do is push that door open. We’ve done it before. Let’s do it again.

Jonathan Capehart is a member of The Post editorial board, writes for the PostPartisan blog and is host of the “Cape Up” podcast.

To give you a break from the scandal over a hostile foreign power’s attack on our democracy, let’s turn to something more diverting: the 2020 presidential campaign. We keep hearing that more and more Democrats are running; here are some reports from just the last week or two:

• Mike Allen reports that Joe Biden is the Democrat Donald Trump most fears running against; learning this will cause Biden to immediately start looking for office space for his campaign. Actually, Allen reports that Biden “pines to run and will test the waters this fall,” which surprises no one.

• In a cover profile of Elizabeth Warren in New York magazine, Rebecca Traister writes, “Warren is up for reelection in Massachusetts in November. She can’t say that she is running for president. So officially, it is accurate to say that she is not. But of course she’s running.”

• Sen. Kamala Harris says about running for president, “I’m not ruling it out.”

• “I don’t think there’s another job in America that prepares you to be president better than being a mayor of a major American city, because mayors are executing every day,” said former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, who has been making speeches and giving interviews all around the country.

• Former attorney general Eric Holder told Stephen Colbert, “I’m thinking about” running for president.

• Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick took a campaign-style swing through Texas, prompting lots of 2020 speculation, which he hasn’t discouraged.

• Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, is going to Iowa to give a speech at a Democratic dinner often visited by future presidential candidates.

OK, that last one is a little silly (no offense to Mr. Avenatti’s legal skills, but maybe we can leave the politics to politicians). I haven’t even mentioned Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Martin O’Malley or Terry McAuliffe, all of whom will probably be running, plus the odd governor or congressman you haven’t yet thought of. And there is one announced candidate, Rep. John Delaney of Maryland. There could be 15 or more major Democratic candidates.

This might look like chaos, but it’s the best thing that could happen to Democrats. In fact, more people should run.

Why do I say that? The first reason is that the more competitive the primary is, the more likely it will be that the candidate who prevails will have shown her- or himself to have what it takes to win in November. And the truth is that despite what we’ve seen from all these people in their careers to this point, there’s no way to know who that will be. As my friend Mark Schmitt of the New America Foundation observes, the presidential campaign is so different from any other political environment — the intensity, the media attention, the variety of skills demanded, the unrelenting pace — that we can’t know beforehand how any of these people will perform. A talented senator can turn out to be a complete dud as a presidential candidate, while someone you might not have given a second thought to could light voters on fire.

There are few better examples than Joe Biden. He was a respected senator, an excellent orator, and supposedly had that common touch. Yet he ran for president twice and did miserably both times. Most of the time when a former vice president runs for president he’s the favorite, but in this case none of the other Democrats seem to be afraid of him.

Democrats need to select an individual, but they also need to decide what that individual will say about them and what they believe about the broader electorate. In 2008, for instance, Barack Obama embodied everything Democrats wanted to see in themselves: an educated, thoughtful, eloquent, cosmopolitan, multiracial, urbane city dweller with an eye on the future.

Who do they want to say they are now? It isn’t yet clear. I know Democrats who, scarred by the venomous backlash to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, think the party should just nominate a white dude (or at least a dude) and take all that ugliness off the table. I know other Democrats who think that nothing would be worse for a party that wants to represent a changing America than to nominate yet another white man. The best way to figure out what the party as a whole prefers is to have a bunch of candidates vie for their affection and see who prevails.

It’s also about a contest of ideas. For all its weaknesses, the presidential primary is one of the best forums to hash out what the party actually wants and believes in. For instance, right now there’s a vigorous debate going on over how ambitious the party should be in its policy demands. Should it shoot for universal health coverage, free college tuition and a government job guarantee? Some of the candidates will take a more maximal position, and others will want to temper those ambitions with more practicality. A long campaign with lots of competitors will give Democratic voters time to figure out which course they prefer.

In 2016, the Republican Party asked itself who it was, in the form of a primary contest with 17 candidates. The answer was Donald Trump. The 2020 Democratic primaries are going to be a free-for-all, but that may be just what Democrats need to figure out who they are and who they want to be, at least for the near future.

Paul Waldman is an opinion writer for the Plum Line blog.

Many of us have been fighting for health care expansion for years. The Legislature finally agreed to expand Medicaid for the homeless, including addiction treatment. But this leaves law-abiding citizens who are not homeless, but too poor to afford any health care, in limbo. Despite obeying the law, they are treated like second-class citizens when, in many cases, criminals are getting better government-provided health care.

This November, Utahns will be able to correct this unfair situation and, if they vote to expand Medicaid, with a small sales tax increase, they will provide the same health care that homeless addicts get, to individuals under 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

There is also a question on the ballot to increase the gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon to provide guidance to the Legislature. If the voters and Legislature approve, that money will be used to shift general funds from transportation to education, as part of the Our Schools Now compromise. Both ballot initiatives are important to Utahns.

But Utahns have had a lot of tax increases this year, including the Salt Lake City prison sales tax increase, the water and sewer fee increases and the Prop One tax that was voted down several years ago (but that will still apply to Utah and Salt Lake counties). In addition, property taxes will go up to provide more funding for schools.

On July 31, the Salt Lake City Council will have a final public hearing on whether to place a bond on the ballot, along with the other two important ballot questions, that will provide $87 million for Salt Lake City streets. Despite already raising the sales tax for streets, police, affordable housing and transit, the council wants more funding for streets projects.

Salt Lake City will already get money from the Prop One tax for streets and transit. And state Rep. Joel Briscoe is sponsoring a bill for an affordable housing bond that will provide a more effective affordable housing fund for increasing desperately needed housing. With the Prop One funds, Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County are eligible to ask for funds for “regionally significant transportation projects.” So Salt Lake City will have increased funds for streets maintenance and projects.

There is no guarantee that all of the funds will be used for basic maintenance and, as governments like to do, there is a tendency to use funds for monuments to elected officials and beautification and traffic calming projects. Roads should be brought up to basic service levels before trying big projects to make them pretty or decreasing travel lanes. Every time Salt Lake City suggests decreasing travel lanes, no matter how beneficial it could be, the neighboring communities become polarized. Like the Sunnyside and the 2100 South proposals, there is a big uproar and the popularity of the projects significantly decreases.

Ironically, on the same night and time as the public hearing on the bond question, there will be a public hearing on using $15 million in transportation funds on an underground parking garage for the $400 million project west of the Salt Palace. The project requirements are that it should “improve safety, reduce congestion etc.” and projects should have high public support. But, in my opinion, $15 million should be, could be and would be better spent on a bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the 900 South train tracks. Salt Lake City’s plan for a safe bicycle trail on 900 South is significantly impacted by the rails.

Like Aesop’s dog, reaching for too much (in tax increases) could lose everything for Salt Lake and Utah residents. Health care expansion should have priority and the rest of the counties and cities should not be putting more bonds on the ballot. On July 31, at Salt Lake City Hall at 7 p.m., there will be a public hearing on whether to put an $87 million bond question on the ballot with health care expansion’s sales tax increase and the gasoline tax increase.

George Chapman is a former candidate for mayor of Salt Lake City and writes a blog at georgechapman.net.

In spite of the old saying, there is really one thing that is certain in life, and that is that no one gets out alive.

In the past month, two of my friends — both in their 40s — have lost their spouses. A friend is battling her third bout with cancer, this time with a tumor that grew close to her brain stem, and another online friend just lost her baby.

If we live long enough, we will not only know loss ourselves, but we will know and love those who have experienced deep loss.

Grief is a beast. It’s soul-sucking. It will turn your days gray and make dark nights darker. Even simple things — like deciding what to have for dinner — become long-drawn-out problems that have no easy solution.

As confusing and painful as it is to move through grief, it can also be confusing and difficult trying to figure out how to best help someone who is grieving.

Here are some ways to mourn with those who mourn.

Always attend the funeral. It means so much to the family.

Try not to say “If there is anything I can do, let me know.” They won’t. Just pick something you can do and do it.

Be willing to sit with them and let them talk — or not talk. You’re probably familiar with the story of the little girl who helped her neighbor mourn. When her mom asked her how she helped, she said simply, “I cried with her.”

Don’t be afraid to use their loved one’s name. You won’t be “reminding” them of their loss. I promise, they are thinking about them all the time. Honoring them by using their name is healing.

Bring food. When my daughters died, I just could not get back to cooking for about a month. Food after the funeral is sometimes even more welcome than food before the funeral. Ask about food allergies or restrictions and then bring a meal (or more than one). Bring the food in containers that don’t need to be returned.

Supporting a grieving friend is not a one and done. Be there for the long haul. Keep checking in, long after the funeral is over. There is no timeline for grief, but my experience has been that it lasts much longer than our culture seems to think is normal — at least a year and often more.

Know that holidays, birthdays and anniversaries of important days often bring additional grief. Call, send a card or flowers, take them to lunch — something that will let them know that their loved one is not forgotten.

Help take care of everyday tasks. Do kids need to be taken back-to-school shopping? Does the lawn need to be mowed? Groceries purchased? How about taking their garbage cans to the street or even washing laundry? I once had a friend I did not know well take my giant pile of socks, wash them and match them before she brought them back to me. It was a glorious act of service that still touches me.

Get them moving. Exercise can be a great energy booster and endorphin-releaser. Take them walking, golfing, playing a game of tennis — and preferably a physical activity where they can talk while they move.

Get them outside. Take a trip to the mountains, a lake, a beach. Spending time in nature can be so healing.

Help them create a memory book. When my daughter Elizabeth died in 2005, several of my friends took pictures and then each of them did a two-page spread, creating a lovely book for me at a time when I could not have done it myself.

If you don’t know what to say, just stick with “I am so sorry.” A statement meant to be reassuring can really sting. Saying “You can always have another baby” is just as painful as “You can always get remarried.” And any of the ones that imply it is God’s will or somehow they are better off without their loved one? Please don’t.

Grief is a lonely journey and no one can do the grieving for another, but having support along the way makes the road a bit more tolerable and over time, the gift of grief support becomes a treasure.

Holly Richardson, a regular Salt Lake Tribune contributor, is so grateful for those who were willing to mourn with her on the darkest days of her life.

Ogden • The Standard-Examiner newspaper in Ogden has named a new executive editor to oversee its newsroom in addition to her current post directing the Daily Herald in Provo.

The Standard-Examiner reported Jordan Carroll’s new role Friday, two months after it was sold to the Provo newspaper’s West Virginia-based parent company. Twenty-one people were laid off at the Standard-Examiner, including five in the newsroom.

Carroll acknowledges the transition has been “bumpy,” but said good changes are coming and asked readers for patience.

Carroll is a Texas native who graduated from Brigham Young University and has worked for the Daily Herald for six years, three of them in the top newsroom position.

Publisher Rhett Long says she is “young in age, but really old in wisdom,” and he appreciates that she will challenge him on tough decisions.

Salt Lake City police officers handled 1,406 reports for stolen and abandoned bikes last year — but they were only able to return 83 of those to their owners.

But officials hope recent changes to the city’s “cumbersome and antiquated” bike-registration process will encourage more residents to sign up and improve the city’s chances of returning lost property.

“Because of the lack of registration, it was very difficult to match a bike back to its owner,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski. “And so we wanted to streamline our process and make it more effective so if your bike is stolen and recovered, we can get it back to you.”

The city’s police department donates around 300 to 400 bikes each year because it can’t locate their owners.

The council unanimously approved a new ordinance in April making changes to the registration program, including eliminating the $2 bike fee and the use of paper forms.

Now that retailers and residents can register their bikes online for free at www.slcpd.com, Salt Lake City Police Department Detective Keith Horrocks said returning someone’s bike could be as easy as looking up its serial number on the department’s central online database.

As of Thursday, just a few days into the new program, 143 bicycles had been registered with the Salt Lake City Police Department. That’s just a fraction of the number of bikes in the city, but it’s a start, Horrocks said.

“We’re already seeing a greater success with this new format in the amount of registries,” he said. “Now, you know, we’re out there pushing it, too. So we don’t know if it’s the ease of the registration or that we’re actually making a push. Either way, registries are up, so we’re happy.”

State law requires all counties and cities to have bicycle licensing procedures, and it’s technically unlawful to ride a bike in Salt Lake that hasn’t been registered with the city. But Biskupski said the changes to the registration system shouldn’t be seen as a way to enforce those rules.

“By getting people to register and having it be free, more bikes will be in our system and we’ll be more able to return a bike if it does get stolen — that’s really what was driving this,” she said. “It had nothing to do with driving home some sort of ordinance.”

Biskupski encouraged even nonresidents who ride their bikes in Salt Lake City to register online, just in case. And those who have already registered their bikes with a paper form should re-register, since the old system was inconsistent, she added.

Overall, she said she hopes the new processes will help both visitors and residents experience the city as a more bike-friendly environment.

“I think [the new process] sends a clear message to the bikers of Salt Lake City and those who come here to recreate on bicycles that we care about the bike community and we want to be a good partner to the bike community,” Biskupski said. “And this is one of the ways we can be a very good partner to those that get around on bicycles or recreate on bicycles.”

With college football camps about to open, and quarterback battles about to rage in some of them — at BYU, for instance — nobody’s more fully informed on this business than Troy Williams.

He has seen the highs of great opportunity, of running the show, and the lows of the lack of it, of standing on the sideline, rooting for the success of his replacement.

The former Utah starter was rather surprisingly relegated by coaches to backup status just prior to last season, his senior year, after he already had played in 13 games and thrown for 2,757 yards for the Utes the previous season and been freshly named a team captain. And yet, he took on the role in support of Tyler Huntley in a manner that was admirable by any standard.

He wanted to start in the worst way.

Not getting the chance challenged and then demonstrated to him, from the inside out, the vast parameters of his character, his team spirit, his willingness to care more about the success of the whole and less about his individual accomplishments. He shoved the negativity that might have poisoned him out of his mind, concentrating instead on more positive stances.

Now, looking back, his college days gone, he’s glad he kept that good attitude, despite the personal difficulty of putting in thousands of hours of study and work, laying so many of his dreams on the line, and then watching a less-experienced teammate take the wheel of an offense he considered his own.

The mixture of dropping a step back, but staying ready if he was needed, getting completely prepared for games with uncertainty as to whether he would play hanging on one shoulder and doubts about his coaches’ confidence in him hanging on the other, was a major test.

Ultimately, though, Williams made the decision that, after all he had been through, having gone to Washington, having retreated to a JC, coming to Utah, earning the starting spot, and then losing it, he would betray neither himself, nor his team, when Huntley got the nod.

“The main thing I learned is to keep pushing, no matter what,” he says. “Whether you’re on top of the world, or trying to get out of the mud.”

That mud was every bit as thick and splattered and messy as he figured it would be when he was first told Huntley had the job.

“It was a little bit more challenging for myself,” he says. “But the coaching staff expected me to be the guy I was. I had to continue to be that person. I couldn’t switch up and change on everybody. That wouldn’t be fair to my teammates. The best way to go about that situation was to support Tyler, learn from the situation and try to stay positive about everything I was doing.”

So he did. He was.

Asked if he thought about transferring, saving what was left of his college eligibility for more time on the field and to better prove himself to pro scouts, he says that was never seriously considered.

“[Sitting] didn’t help me in getting to the next level,” says Williams, who was invited to a couple of NFL rookie minicamps, and now might join the Utah franchise in the new pro league, the Alliance of American Football. “The guys [at Utah] were good to me when I first got there. And it was only right for me to show them the same respect. Just because things don’t go my way doesn’t mean I needed to pack up and quit.”

He held firm with the Utes, focusing on helping Huntley any way he could, and playing mind games with himself, preparing for whatever opportunity would come, “just trying to stay positive.”

As for Huntley, and the way Williams viewed him, he says: “It was a great opportunity for Tyler to learn, to get experience and be ready for this year.”

Week after week, Williams stood in the background, soldiering on, not allowing his emotions to sag.

“It hurt, for sure,” he says. “Just the type of competitor I am. I really wasn’t expecting for that to happen. It was just another lesson for me to learn. It was real hard, taking that step down, trying to find new ways to contribute to the team, and be a leader, even though I wasn’t on the field. It helped me look at things with a different perspective.”

No longer was his pursuit an isolated, egocentric one. He was in the mix for the betterment of all. And that is a breakthrough, a realization, a journey some star athletes never find, never reach, never make.

Williams has advice for quarterbacks currently in the fight, competitors who see only dark alternatives around their bright, singular goal of starting:

“Stay ready because you never know what could happen. God forbid somebody gets hurt, but you never know, so stay positive. The more you think, ‘I’m not playing, I’m not getting the reps that I want, everybody’s watching at home and I’m not playing,’ that’s just going to make your situation worse. I would say, continue to work at your craft, so when your time comes, you go out there and show everybody what you can do. You may not get all the time that you want, but you’re going to get your chance to play. So, stay sharp and be ready for when your time comes.”

As for his now spent time at Utah, the highs and the lows, Williams reflects back on it with happiness and familiar positivity: “I had a lot of fun, met a lot of great people. Great fans, great atmosphere. I just try to take that look on life with me. Too often, we dwell on the negative things. I try to stay positive and live life to the fullest every day.”

GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.

Provo • Stay the course as a college football independent or go back to a conference?

Seven years after BYU left the Mountain West, a conference it helped form, and going it alone in football, the Cougars’ marquee sports program is at a crossroads.

After a dismal 2017 season in which the Cougars went 4-9 and fired one of the most beloved figures in their football history, Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer, the stay-or-go question has divided fans, media members and former players more than ever. It continues to be a hot topic on social media websites, fan message boards and sports talk radio, mainly because of BYU’s struggles last season.

Is the program in a nosedive, or was last season — the worst season since 1970 — an aberration?

Every indication from school officials is that they plan to remain independent in football until at least 2023, when most major conferences' television contracts expire. Until then, BYU’s ultimate dream — an invitation to join a Power Five conference — is on hold.

BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe said at BYU Football Media Day on June 22 that the “status quo” is the preferred route for now.

“When the broadcast companies look to renew the broadcast rights, at that point in time there will maybe be changes in the landscape of competition,” he said.

Still, the topic is worth exploring again as the critical 2018 season approaches.

In a roundtable last January where the football team’s worst season in decades and Detmer’s dismissal were major topics of discussion, Holmoe was asked if BYU would ever “bail” on independence.

“It is the same answer that I have always said: We are not looking right now to get into [another] league,” he said.

National media: That was then, this is now

The debate that won’t go away has heated up again as BYU coaches prepare to begin preseason training camp on Thursday. Having gone 9-4 in 2016, with four losses by a combined eight points, the program appeared on the upswing under the energy and enthusiasm brought by new coach Kalani Sitake. But everything went wrong in 2017, especially on offense.

Another subpar year would be devastating, and perhaps cost Sitake his job.

Though maybe leaning a little too heavily on last year’s results, some national and local media members are now urging the Cougars to reconsider their position and rejoin a league. That list includes Salt Lake Tribune columnist Gordon Monson, who originally supported the move eight years ago. He wrote that “things have changed” and BYU should rejoin the Mountain West to “breathe some life” back into its football program.

Former ESPN analyst Brett McMurphy, who has covered college football nationally for nearly three decades, agrees.

McMurphy said BYU can’t accomplish the goal of every non-Power Five team, which is to win its conference and get into a New Year’s Six bowl game.

“An 11-1 record as an independent, and BYU is headed to whatever bowl agreement it had lined up in August, the same bowl it would have gone to at 6-6,” McMurphy told The Tribune. “But [go] 11-1 as the Mountain West champ and BYU is likely in the Fiesta, Cotton or Peach Bowl.”

He said only BYU can answer the question of whether money from its ESPN deal is worth more than never having a shot at a New Year’s bowl, and “all the notoriety” that comes with it.

Stewart Mandel of Theathletic.com called it a “tough question” and acknowledges that, from an exposure and financial standpoint, BYU would “probably be better off remaining independent because the TV situation isn’t great for [Group of Five] leagues.”

However, he added: “The problem is they don’t have much to play for in the postseason unless they are having a dream season. There’s no guarantee of a NY6 invitation. … And because of that, I’ve felt like they fall off the national radar completely after September, even before last year.”

Finally, Mandel concluded, “being in a G5 conference and being eligible for that NY6 berth would help solve some of that, though it is understandable why that would be a tough pill to swallow.”

Matt Brown, an editor at the website SB Nation, has written extensively about BYU’s plight as an independent and offers a somewhat different take, while calling the situation “complicated,” with no easy answers.

Brown says a lot depends on the school’s aspirations. He said BYU is unlike any school in the country, which clouds the picture.

“If your goal is to be a top 25 program and compete for bigger bowl games, then I don’t think staying independent is the right move right now,” he said. “But if you want exposure and more revenue and things like that, you’re in a pretty good place right now … and I wouldn’t recommend going back to the Mountain West.”

An Ohio native who now lives in Chicago, Brown has been able to watch BYU play live several times and on television weekly.

“In terms of exposure and [giving] access to its fans, that is mission-accomplished,” he said. “You can’t take that away from BYU.”

BYU fans overwhelmingly prefer independence

BYU fans who responded to an informal Twitter survey prefer staying independent to returning to a G5 conference by a 7-to-1 margin.

“BYU football as an independent has been as successful statistically as [it was] in a conference,” said fan Shaun Gordon. “Fan perception is separate from reality, and the benefits of independence far outweigh the benefits of going back to a G5 conference.”

Indeed, BYU’s average win total in its 12 years in the Mountain West is the same as it has been in seven seasons as an independent: Eight.

However, BYU has posted just one 10-win season (2011) in seven seasons as an independent, compared with four seasons of 10 wins or more in its final seven seasons in the Mountain West.

“Last year just clouds things so much,” SB Nation’s Brown said.

A lot of people believe BYU’s schedule is more difficult as an independent than it was as an MWC member, but that’s not true. It is just front-loaded more, with ultra-tough games early and easy games late. That’s a drawback to independence almost everyone can agree on.

Per figures compiled by the Provo radio station, BYU’s average strength of schedule as an MWC member was 65th in the country. As an independent, it has been 77th.

“Utah fans, Kyle Gunther [a former Ute player and local radio host] and four BYU fans want BYU to go back to G5,” said Cougar fan Kyle Campbell. “The rest of us don’t.”

Added BYU fan Nathan Wagstaff: “The gap between P5 and G5 is widening. Going back to the MWC wouldn’t magically make things like they once were. Things have changed, and the only hope of being relevant is moving forward as an independent and hoping for a major restructuring in college football.”

Of the handful of BYU fans who voted for a change of course in the Twitter survey, most want a change because they believe independence has been a failure.

“Definitely give up independence,” said Don Olsen, the former KSL broadcaster. “It was a fool’s errand that began the program’s downfall. What they are doing now is not sustainable and could force ownership [LDS Church] to pull the plug.”

Another fan, Steve Christiansen, suggests staying the course until 2023.

“If a spot doesn’t shake out in the P5, they’ll have to consider the walk of shame back to G5,” he wrote.

Answering a question about whether BYU football is better or worse off now than in 2010, BYU fan Rachel Mullen summed it up thusly: “Financially better, product worse.”

Several BYU fans mentioned lackluster home schedules, late-night kickoff times and the lack of quality opponents in November as drawbacks to independence. However, several noted that in 2019 BYU’s home slate includes Utah, USC, Washington and Boise State and a trip to San Diego State for the season finale.

Return to MW would be 'devastating,’ expert says

Utah resident Ryan Teeples evaluates the financial viability of organizations in their markets, assesses risk and opportunity, and evaluates advertising value and consumer demand in markets for products and services as the owner of Teeples Consulting.

He’s not affiliated with BYU, but is a fan and has researched the viability and financial aspects of independence. He is passionate about the need for the school to stay independent unless a P5 conference comes calling.

Teeples chalked up some media members’ desire to see BYU return to a G5 conference as a “lack of acumen and understanding about the revenue and financial underpinnings of running an athletic department.”

Financially, there’s no question that independence has been a boon for BYU, Teeples believes.

Although BYU is a private school and does not have to open its books to the public, it does have to report revenue and expenses to the U.S. Department of Education. According to the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis published yearly by the USDE, BYU’s football revenue in 2016, the latest year available, was $26.1 million.

In 2010, BYU’s final season in the MWC, it was $15.6 million. That’s a pretty big leap.

The Mountain West’s Boise State, which has a more lucrative television contract than any of its MWC cohorts — financial considerations not likely to be given to BYU should it be invited back — reported $21.3 million in football revenue in 2016. The next highest was San Diego State, at $13.7 million.

Pointing to those figures and recent news reports that G5 schools such as New Mexico and Cincinnati are struggling financially and looking at cutting certain athletic programs, Teeples says it would be a “big mistake” for BYU to join a conference outside the Power 5.

“If you look at it from a financial standpoint, and you have to because that bleeds into all of the other areas of competition, going back to the Mountain West would be absolutely devastating to BYU,” Teeples said. “I understand why people want to relive the old glory days, but Utah and TCU are gone and the Mountain West is not the same anymore and does not generate enough revenue to be financially viable long term without heavy subsidies from student fees and state governments. Is that the company you want to keep?”

Teeples also believes that ESPN will continue as BYU’s broadcast partner until 2023, saying the cable sports giant would not have extended its contract with BYU through 2019 last year if it didn’t value what BYU brings to the table, even as an independent.

“In my opinion, independence is the only sustainable course for BYU, barring a Power Five invite,” Teeples concluded.

Could Cougs get a cold shoulder?

Some aren’t sure that the Mountain West, which has 12 football members, wants BYU back. Holmoe said in January that he serves on the NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Committee with MW commissioner Craig Thompson, and they talk frequently, “but [adding BYU] is not a topic of discussion at this point.”

Holmoe acknowledged that directly after BYU left “maybe there was a freezing period” and some “athletic directors were angry. They thought we shouldn’t have done it.”

He said feelings since “have thawed out” and mentioned that future football games with SDSU and UNLV have been scheduled and talks are ongoing with Wyoming and Air Force.

Hollywood, Calif. • Utah receiver Britain Covey wishes he could have “Chase Hansen” as a superpower. Hansen just hopes to remain a healthy version of himself as a senior linebacker, applying the physical traits that his teammate envies.

Imagining someone with Covey's hands and shiftiness, standing 6-foot-3 and weighing 230-plus pounds, is a fantasy. The real possibility of Hansen's playing a full season in 2018, pressuring quarterbacks and making tackles all over the field, is almost as exciting to the Utes.

Hansen wants a satisfying ending for himself and his teammates in a college career that began with his redshirt season of 2012, as a Utah quarterback who arrived in a recruiting class with Travis Wilson. So here’s Hansen, six years years later, having served a church mission and played three seasons amid injuries and position changes. He’s hoping to lead the Utes somewhere they’ve never gone — to the Pac-12 championship game, with preseason practice beginning Wednesday.

“It's been frustrating,” Hansen said during the Pac-12 Football Media Day, summarizing his career, “but I feel good and I feel like I'm in a position to do a lot of good things.”

He's playing linebacker, having transitioned from safety in a move that's less abrupt than switching from quarterback. Based on Hansen's athletic ability and Ute coach Kyle Whittingham's history of turning QBs and other offensive recruits into defensive stars, everybody knew that was a possibility. Even so, he joked about his original script of playing quarterback, winning a Heisman Trophy and leading the Utes to a national championship (that last part remains in play, theoretically).

“Apart from the friendships I'm able to build with my teammates, my favorite part about being a Utah football player is the crowd.” - Chase Hansen

20 questions with Chase Hansen: https://t.co/o0WGjafUXr pic.twitter.com/O21Zlr9LPC

— Utah Football (@Utah_Football) June 25, 2018

It is worth wondering what Hansen may have become as a college QB, after he produced possibly the greatest 24-minute quarterbacking performance in Rice-Eccles Stadium history to end his Lone Peak High School career. In the 2011 Class 5A state championship game vs. Fremont, Hansen accounted for 398 yards of offense in the first half.

That kind overwhelming effort is what made Covey respond to a UtahUtes.com question about superpowers by saying he would want to transform into Hansen. In real life, Hansen has become a full-time defensive player, adopting No. 22 as a safety and now a linebacker, after he “kind of outgrew that position,” Whittingham said. The coach describes Hansen’s new spot as “his future at the next level and his best fit for us.”

As the Utes' third-string quarterback in 2015, playing behind two seniors, Hansen willingly moved to defense in the last one-third of the season. He loves the job description of hitting people, although his aggressiveness has led to some injuries. Staying healthy this season is important — “It’s my goal, it’s my prayer, it’s my plan,” he said — but he’s not about to alter his approach to the game.

People want to know what Hansen will do differently for the sake of his health, and he's ready with the answer: “Nothing.”

His father, a former BYU linebacker, coached Chase as a youth football player. “If I tried teaching him anything,” Brian Hansen said, “it was to slow down a little bit.”

Good advice, wrong audience. “Dad,” the boy would say, “that's the way I play.”

Hansen’s season-ending injury in 2015 was simply bad luck. He had switched to defense, replaced a senior starter and become a star with 11 tackles in his first start, only to get hurt when a teammate rolled into him on a meaningless play to conclude the Utes' victory at Washington.

He recovered from that severe ankle injury and made it through the 2016 season mostly intact, leading the Utes in tackles, but missed five games due to injuries in 2017.

“My biggest wish is for him to stay healthy and play the way he wants to play,” Brian Hansen said.

Preserving his body for an NFL career is not Hansen's concern; he just hopes to give his teammates a full season's effort and see where that takes them. “We haven't spent two minutes talking about [anything] after this year,” his father said. “He just really loves these guys. I've never seen him so passionate about being with a group of guys.”

The Utes have had some fun this summer, with weekend activities such as rope swinging, cliff jumping and paintball after a week of tough workouts. Wednesday marks another phase, the start of a new season. Hansen is eager for his senior year to begin, and he really wants to be there in the end.

Cove Fort • The Utah Department of Transportation says a 23-mile stretch of Interstate 70 that was closed because of a wildfire in south-central Utah is expected to fully reopen Saturday evening.

I-70′s westbound lanes east of the junction with Interstate 15 were reopened late Saturday afternoon after being closed about four earlier hours earlier, but Utah DOT and the state Highway Patrol said eastbound lanes remained closed due to a controlled burn.

Officials said the closure of I-70 in both directions was due to safety concerns for firefighters and the public.

The lightning-sparked fire started July 17 about 7 miles east of the interstates’ junction near Cove Fort about 155 miles south of Salt Lake City.

The fire had burned about 1.7 square miles and was 15 percent contained Saturday.

It was burning in forest and rugged terrain, which limited the access of firefighters who were using burnout operations and other indirect tactics as aircraft dropped retardant.

About 250 firefighters and other personnel are assigned to the fire.

Redding, Calif. • Fueled by an incendiary combination of scorching temperatures, dry air and unpredictable winds, the deadly Carr Fire has doubled in size to 80,906 acres - almost the size of the city of Philadelphia. The wildfire has forced thousands to flee, torched 500 buildings and killed two firefighters trying to contain it.

Fire Inspector Jeremy Stoke was killed battling the Northern California blaze, the Redding Fire Department announced. The other firefighter, a privately hired bulldozer operator, has yet to be publicly identified.

The deaths underscored the hazards of a blaze that Cal Fire Chief Brett Gouvea called "extremely dangerous and moving with no regard to what's in its path."

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning on Friday, saying fire-favorable conditions would exist until at least 8 a.m. Monday. The fire was so strong it was producing wind gusts of up to 50 mph and fire whirlwinds — tornado-like funnels of fire, ash and combustible gas. Smoke from the Carr Fire could be seen from space.

Authorities say the fire started on Monday, when a car having some sort of mechanical issue sparked a spreading blaze.

But that slow burn "became very active" later in the week as weather conditions tilted in the fire's favor, Gouvea said.

On Thursday morning, it was burning across 20,000 acres, fire officials said. Within 24 hours, it had doubled in size, thwarting efforts to bring it under control.

By Saturday morning, only 5 percent of the fire was contained.

Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency in Shasta County, where Redding sits about two hours south of Oregon, and in other counties where the state battled multiple raging fires.

As the Carr Fire’s flames beelined toward populated areas, emergency management officials scrambled to get thousands to safety — and to protect the property they left behind.

Marin County reported that three of its firefighters working on defending structures were burned on their ears, face and hands by a sudden, scorching blast of heat. All three were released from the hospital, with one expected to receive an additional evaluation. Gouvea also said civilians had been injured, although authorities did not immediately provide further details.

Although the death toll remains at two, there are still an untallied number of people who authorities fear may have been unable to escape the fire.

Before the blaze engulfed a home on Quartz Hill Road, Melody Bledsoe and her great-grandchildren Emily and James Roberts called loved ones in a panic, saying they could see the flames.

"She was screaming, "It's getting closer," and you could hear the sirens," Donald Kewley, the boyfriend of Bledsoe's granddaughter, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Then the phone went dead."

When they returned to the home after the flames had passed, "the whole neighborhood is gone," he told the newspaper. "It's absolutely obliterated. It's just a smoldering mess."

Ed Bledsoe, Melody's husband, has been searching evacuation shelters after cadaver dogs that went over the burned remains of his home came up with nothing.

"I just don't see how I can go without them," he told CBS News. "Somebody has to know where they're at."

The weather was counteracting firefighters' efforts to make a dent in the blaze. Forecasts for the weekend said temperatures could approach 110 degrees on Saturday and Sunday, the Weather Service said. The humidity hovered around 5 to 10 percent, and winds gusted to 30 mph in some canyons that were on fire.

The result, warned the National Weather Service: "Dangerous and rapid irregular spreading of a large wildfire threatening life and property."

For people in affected or threatened areas, the message was simple: Leave. But even people spreading that message were threatened by the quickly-expanding fire.

Power went out at the Record Searchlight newspaper in Redding, while ABC affiliate KRCR had to stop its broadcast to evacuate its offices.

Residents described a sense of confusion as the fire continued to burn closer. Amber Bollman said she and her husband, Tim, received mandatory evacuation notices at their home near the Sacramento River — followed by notices saying they did not have to leave their home, but should be prepared to do so.

"We have about 10 firefighters who live in the neighborhood and they were saying as long as it didn't jump the river, we'd be safe," Bollman said. "We know [the fire personnel] were doing their best, but there was definitely a lack of communication about how rapidly it was coming."

They packed up some of their things and headed east to her parent's house in Shingletown. Tim Bollman and his 14-year-old son, Jack, went back for more. With Jack recording video, they followed fire personnel out of their neighborhood and saw flames surrounding the truck as they left, she said.

"They barely made it out," she said.

On Friday morning, Bollman said they found out that their home had been lost.

"You get as much as you can, you get out with your life, but your home is so much a part of you that you can't replace," she said. "It's material, but we have nothing. We have our lives and family and friends, but we just feel lost."

Michelle Harrington, a teacher who lives near the Bollmans, said she and her husband packed things up in their car on Thursday afternoon. They were watching the evening news after 6 p.m. when her sister texted that flames were coming over the ridge.

"We opened the garage door and it was like a hurricane; the trees were bent over and garbage cans were blowing down the street," Harrington said. "I thought we were going to die. I didn't know if we were going to get out of there."

They escaped to her parent's house on the east side of Redding. Without knowing what happened to their home, Harrington said they have begun wondering what they will do next.

"We’re already thinking long term — where do you go? How long before we have a home again?' she asked.

Complicating matters for firefighters was the fact that they were fighting a battle on multiple fronts.

The Ferguson Fire, which forced officials to close the Yosemite Valley through at least the weekend, has burned across nearly 50,000 acres since mid-July and was 29 percent contained as of Saturday morning, fire officials said.

The Cranston Fire in Riverside County had burned across 12,300 acres and was 16 percent contained, officials said.