Firefighters are using the cooler and wetter weather in eastern Utah to gain on the Dollar Ridge Fire, which has been rapidly burning through historically dry timber and grasses and consuming homes in the Uinta Basin for almost a week.
The human-caused fire burning near Fruitland has eaten through at least 90 homes and threatens an estimated 1,000 more. More than 1,100 people have been evacuated. While extreme hot and dry conditions bolstered the fire in its early days, the weather appears to be switching in fire crews’ favor, Great Basin Incident Management spokesman Morgan O’Brien said.