The large wildfires burning near Dugway Proving Ground and south of Terra are now being treated as a single fire as crews work for total containment.
The 10 fires, now going under the name of Onaqui Mountain Complex, were sparked around 5 p.m. on Sunday by lightning storms traveling through the area. According to a news release from the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, the total acreage burned reached 37,974 acres by Thursday night.
Firefighters were able to limit growth to about 265 acres Wednesday, with containment up to 75 percent, the release said. The fires are being fought with fire engines, bulldozers, hand crews, smoke jumpers, helicopters and airplanes, totaling 279 personnel.
With containment on a majority of the fires, crews are expected to establish and maintain control lines around the remaining fires and begin rehabilitation on fire-affected areas, according to the release. Two other fires in the county, the 185-acre Station fire and 18,177-acre Cedar Mountain fire, are expected to come under the same incident management team as the Onaqui Mountain Complex.
The Cedar Mountain fire is only 5 percent contained and is being battled by 160 personnel.
The incident management team is housed at Dugway Proving Ground’s emergency operations center and the facility is using its helipad for helicopter support operations, according to public affairs chief Robert Saxon. More than 200 firefighters are being housed at a self-contained basecamp in a field near English Village.
Dugway Proving Ground firefighters were among those who responded to the Onaqui Complex Fires on Sunday through Tuesday, Saxon said. The fires threatened the LDS Church near the front gates and resulted in voluntary evacuation requests in southern Terra and Hatch Ranch on Monday evening.
Saxon said no fire made it onto Dugway property, though the flames approached as close as 50 to 100 meters.
Fire crews from the Bureau of Land Management, state Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, as well as Terra, Stockton, Rush Valley, Vernon, Tooele Army Depot and Dugway Proving Ground fire departments have been involved in battling the Onaqui Mountain Complex fires.
Three of the five active wildfires in the state are located in Tooele County, according to utahfireinfo.gov, which is a collaborative effort between state and federal agencies. There have been 553 wildfires in Utah in 2017, which have burned more than 150,000 acres.