Fillmore • It’s been a baptism by fire for Steve O’Camb.

He’d only been sheriff of Millard County — a rural area in west-central Utah — for six short days before a lightning-sparked wildfire began burning in the wilderness at the edge of a town he oversees.

Another six days later, that same fire suddenly erupted, ballooning into a massive inferno that forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents across three towns and the neighboring Paiute reservation.

“We’ve been fighting fire more days of my tenure than fighting crime,” O’Camb said from his new office in Fillmore on Monday, where boxes sit unpacked. “It’s been interesting to say the least.”

His building on Highway 99 also sits yards away from where the Widemouth 2 Fire has continued its spread. Outside the office window, as he talked, helicopters picked up water out of a nearby reserve and hauled it with a loud whir overhead. His phone and police radio pinged every few seconds with new alerts and updates.

The normally slammed gas station and Subway shop down the street sat mostly empty, evacuated the night before. Patients at the hospital across the street had all been moved to other facilities.

The blaze was considered “catastrophic” for its extreme fire behavior and is too dangerous for crews to fight upfront. As of late Monday, it was 0% contained, and firefighters were not trying to stop forward progress. Instead, they focused on protecting people and property, O’Camb said.

At 68,191 acres, it continued to burn uncomfortably close late Monday to the southern edge of the small town of Fillmore, which has about 3,000 residents and only a handful of stoplights, proud of its heritage as the previous capital of the Utah Territory before Utah became a state.

The Widemouth 2 Fire ignited July 27 near Kanosh, where residents were first evacuated, including on the reservation. It skirted there and headed for the next town north, Meadow. That was also spared.

O’Camb remembers sitting in his office when he saw the storm roll in that first sparked the blaze, watching as lightning hit the ground.

Since then, the blaze has erupted more than 10 times in size and traveled more than 20 miles. It is burning hot and fast through dry cedars and grasses — faster than any fire O’Camb says he or the crews he’s spoken with have ever seen — aided by high winds, hot temperatures and low humidity.

“This is the hottest burning and the tallest flames they’ve seen in their entire careers,” he said. “There’s nothing going to stop it.”

He said he’d expect to find more moisture in a 2x4 wooden board from Home Depot than the trees the blaze has scorched. “They’re on the edge of spontaneous combustion,” he said.

Overall, about 600 residents across 150 homes have been alerted to evacuate, O’Camb estimated Monday, and they remain under those orders; not one has been lifted. That’s about 5% of the county’s total population of roughly 13,000. O’Camb personally knocked on doors at 2 a.m. Monday, he said.

Hastily made signs hung on some doors Monday afternoon, noting, “We’ve evacuated.” Children’s bikes and scooters lay abandoned on grass.

Residents flee fast-moving flames

Barbara McGowan, 81, stuffed plastic grocery bags full of clothes, shoes and her favorite pillow into backseat of her gold Ford Taurus.

Her house sits in the periphery of Fillmore that was evacuated Sunday night, but her family had hoped the fire might stop edging closer to them. It hadn’t.

“I would take everything, if I could,” McGowan said Monday morning. “But I’m trying to grab only the stuff I need.”

The floral decorative pillow was nonnegotiable. “Isn’t it pretty? I just have to take that.”

McGowan, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law, also packed her family photos and dashed back inside before 11 a.m. to make sure she’d grabbed the ones she cared about most.

She’d moved to Fillmore around 2018 after her husband died. It scared her to see the flames from the front porch.

“They keep telling us to get out of here,” McGowan said.

The family cat, Toby, strutted around outside, seemingly unfazed by the growing smoke cloud. “Yes, we’ll grab you, too,” she said to the pet.

Her son-in-law, Darin Dearden, 60, returned to Fillmore eight years ago after growing up in the area and built the house on family farmland; it is surrounded by acres of crested wheat, which is a naturally fire-resistant plant.

Dearden hopes that helps as the Widemouth 2 Fire creeps toward the home. But any strong wind, both Dearden and O’Camb acknowledged, could propel the blaze to the doorstep anyway.

It was blowing north Monday, which was good. But a shift to the south could mean concern.

“How dry and how fast the fire is moving, it could just change in a hurry,” Dearden said.

Dearden’s brothers run Dearden Motor Co., on Fillmore’s Main Street, which sits toward the center of town and isn’t threatened; on Sunday, as a precaution, Dearden took some family photos there. As of Monday, Dearden, his wife and McGowan were headed to a family home in Holden to the north.

There have been three wildfires on the edge of Fillmore, he said, since he returned home. That includes the Halfway Hill Fire in 2022, which burned the same spot the Widemouth 2 Fire is currently scorching, but only a fraction of the acreage: about 12,000 total.

“This one definitely tops it,” said Dennis Alldredge, a retired teacher who has lived in Fillmore for more than 40 years, “especially with how fast it’s moving.”

“Everybody jumped and ran,” he said about the evacuations Sunday night. “It was coming right at us.”

Alldredge left his home that sits next to a Fillmore chapel with his wife and daughter after sheriff’s deputies knocked on his door. On Monday, though, he returned to stand watch and volunteered to help keep residents out of fire areas.

In town, in some spots, more firefighters milled around than residents. At The Eatery, the main diner in Fillmore, seats were filled with smoky-faced crews eating burgers and fries. They watched from the windows inside as planes dropped retardant where they’d been working earlier.

Smoke also filled the little valley the town is nestled into, mostly obscuring the white M on the mountainside for Millard County and the billboards along Interstate 15 advertising Sanpete County’s coming rodeo in late August.

Evacuating farmers, ranchers and inmates

As of Monday, O’Camb said he believed a few structures had been lost to the blaze, but no primary homes. He was aware of one RV that had been parked in Kanosh Canyon that was destroyed.

Utah’s deer hunt is starting soon, and O’Camb was worried about hunters camping in the backcountry without cellphone service. So he sent a deputy up in a state helicopter to check.

That deputy yelled down with a megaphone at anyone he could find to clear the area.

O’Camb said his office has also been working to help farmers and ranchers quickly evacuate. That has included closing roads so they could better move equipment to leave.

The sheriff’s office has also been reaching out to ranchers with permits in the area to help get their animals off of the mountain. There have been some losses there.

Wenda Crabb, the mayor of Kanosh, said initial estimates are that 100 cattle were killed by the blaze. Others, though, had their hooves burned so badly they will likely have to be put down. An additional 1,500 cattle are currently unaccounted for, she said.

“The fire crew is working with the ranchers to get them in there as safety allows,” she added. “Those ranchers have taken the majority of the capital loss. We hope to help them find some relief with what is sure to be a large financial hit, but it’s early times.”

Additionally, the Utah Department of Corrections proactively moved 40 state inmates out of the Millard County jail on Sunday night. The fire hadn’t prompted evacuations there yet, O’Camb said, but it’s hard to suddenly relocate those individuals with proper security.

Crews from the sheriff’s office, local fire departments in the county, departments across the state and the country have been battling the blaze.

There has been some tension with residents, state fire officials acknowledged, over how fast the blaze grew and why more wasn’t done to contain it initially.

“We understand the fear and frustration of the public during this ever-changing situation,” read a statement Monday put out by those managing the fire. “We do not take the impact lightly, and are doing our best to keep the public safe, protect the communities, and suppress this fire. We’re here, away from our homes and families, being respectful and professional. We hope the communities will return that same grace.”

Adam Solt, a spokesperson assigned to the Widemouth 2 Fire, said the blaze was originally considered 15% contained in the first few days. That indicates the perimeter where crews feel confident flames won’t cross.

But several times, in portions that were not contained, embers carried and sparked new fire starts.

“One ember would fly over and land in the wrong place,” Solt said. “We knew it could happen.”

O’Camb said there were also initially eight separate starts from lightning. And seven were successfully snuffed.

Residents, he noted, have also been upset that some retardant had been dropped into watershed areas.

“We’re trying to save the town here,” he countered.

Betting his first paycheck

Crystal Penney, who owns The Eatery, watched Monday as smoke continued to rise from the canyon where her little cabin sits. She said she is grateful for the efforts of all crews, and she has been preparing meals for firefighters and those staying at the American Red Cross of Utah’s shelter.

“It’s been a challenge in a small town,” the 37-year-old said.

Her husband had been up at their property, trying to hose it down and texting her videos as the flames came within 100 feet.

Fillmore, she said, is a special place where residents are proud of their roots — in a town and a county named for U.S. President Millard Fillmore, and one that also boasts a rock cliff they say is shaped like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s founder Joseph Smith’s face.

It’s weird and lovable, she said, and she wants it to be safe.

O’Camb does, too. He was awake for 36 hours straight from Saturday into Sunday as the fire grew and evacuations started.

He didn’t expect to be the sheriff currently running law enforcement and emergency operations in the county. When he filed to run in the election, even if he won, he thought, he wouldn’t start until next January.

But the sheriff who had been running the county decided to step down early. So O’Camb and his competitor agreed that whoever won the primary would step in to keep operations running. And O’Camb won with nearly 60% of the vote.

He’d grown up in the area and started his career as an officer for Millard County in the ’90s. He then spent time policing in West Valley City before moving back to his hometown of Delta and investigating cold cases.

His love of the community, he said, made him want to lead. And he said that’s been put to the test in his first 14 days on the job.

O’Camb is hoping the fire can be controlled quickly and the damage kept to a minimum. He’s mapped out, just in case, extra evacuation areas, depending on which direction the blaze moves. But he doesn’t think those will be necessary.

After just two weeks as sheriff, he’s willing to say: “I bet you my first paycheck that it won’t reach there.”