130,000 Acres Burn in Utah as Wildfires Plague West

Air tankers, helicopters and crews on the ground waged war Tuesday on a 6,000-acre blaze at Reno’s outskirts. Meanwhile, firefighters in Utah battled a 130,000-acre wildfire across the west desert.

Those fires and outbreaks in Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming sapped the number of available air tankers, helicopters, engines and crews.

“Utah is taking an awful lot of the hand crews we requested,” fire information officer Stacey Giomi said in Reno.

Nevada’s fire began Monday afternoon near the California line and exploded to 3,500 acres in three hours. By nightfall, flames in the mountains could be seen from downtown casinos.

“It was the fastest thing I ever saw,” said Spence Bocks, whose home was scorched by the flames but left intact. “It was just screaming across the field . . . it just kept coming like a train.”

During the night, crews lit backfires near expensive homes to deplete the fuel before flames arrived.

By Tuesday, smoke that just 12 hours earlier cloaked the city in an orange, eye-stinging pall had diminished to a single huge plume. Winds up to 35 mph whipped the flames Monday night but died down early Tuesday.

“Right now, things are looking very good,” Giomi said.

While the flames scorched houses as they skipped through subdivisions, trucks stood guard. One house was heavily damaged.

“There were folks that were really fighting fire in there yesterday and really made some incredible stands to save a lot of structures,” Giomi said.

Meanwhile, dozens of people were allowed to return to their homes in communities west of Reno on Tuesday, and some firefighting crews were released.

A fleet of five air tankers and eight helicopters concentrated on rugged areas inaccessible to brush trucks and crews that were knocking down hot spots in the grass, sagebrush and juniper pines. They claimed 40% containment early Tuesday but would not estimate when the fire would be fully contained or controlled.

The fire was human-caused, but the exact source was unknown.

The largest Western blaze was in west-central Utah, where the Leamington Complex fire has blackened 130,000 acres. Fire officials raised the estimate Tuesday evening by 30,000 acres because of better visibility and mapping procedures. In all, at least 10 Utah fires have scorched nearly 165,000 acres.

A separate blaze, the 6,800-acre Adelaide Complex burning 80 miles to the south, spread in rough, rocky and rattlesnake-infested terrain. On Monday, it sent a huge black anvil-shaped plume 25,000 feet high, attracting hundreds of gawkers.

“It’s starting to be a problem,” said fire information officer Wally Shiverdecker. “People are coming out here and we’re being forced to devote resources to keeping them from being burned up.”

In California, firefighters on Monday night contained a blaze of unknown cause in Mariposa County that blackened 2,770 acres and destroyed 15 homes. Authorities estimated damage at $1 million.

A 4,500-acre fire south of Wyoming’s Laramie Peak sent smoke over a large part of southeast and central Wyoming. Colorado firefighters hoped that an approaching cold front would help them contain the 10,000-acre O’Pinion fire west of Craig.

In Arizona, a fire touched off by lightning burned about 200 acres on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, forcing closure of one road. The fire did not threaten any structures.

In southeastern Montana, a wildfire sparked by lightning had spread to more than 22,000 acres of grassland Tuesday. No buildings or other structures were threatened.