This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Onaqui Mountain Complex Fire, a collection of several lightning-sparked blazes, had consumed nearly 37,700 acres of remote, sparsely populated desert and range lands in Utah's West Desert as of Wednesday.
However, its days are numbered, literally, according to Fire Information Officer Shayne Ward.
"Actually, it's looking really good out there," he said. "It's 45 percent contained now, and they're saying 100 percent containment by [Saturday]. It only has a couple days of life left in it; that's pretty typical for desert fires like this one."
The 1,900 residents of the desert hamlet of Terra, about 60 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, had been evacuated for two hours on Monday night, but crews turned away flames and no structures were lost.
On Wednesday, 279 firefighters — aided by bulldozers on the ground and water-laden helicopters and fire retardant-bearing air tankers — worked to douse the flames burning mostly in swaths of sagebrush, grass, pinyon and juniper.
However, while confident, crews also warily watched for new wildfires to erupt: the northwest quarter of Utah was under a "Red Flag" warning through Wednesday night.
Meantime, only a couple hundred firefighters remained on the 397-acre Water Tower Fire. That blaze near Alpine, reduced to mere whiffs of smoke on Wednesday, was near full containment, Ward said.
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