Fire crews planned to be on the mountain at dawn Sunday after a fire that swept across the western face of Mount Olympus Saturday afternoon came within 600 yards of homes in Olympus Cove.
Salt Lake County deputy sheriffs warned residents to be prepared to evacuate, and search-and-rescue crews stood by overnight in the event an evacuation became necessary.A team of 45 county firefighters planned to patrol Olympus Cove streets all night, keeping watch on the fire that county fire marshal Dave Limberg said had "every potential in the world" of becoming an inferno like the 1991 firestorm that destroyed more than 380 homes in Oakland, Calif.
"We brought in four complete engine companies above what we usually have," Limberg said. "If things do break out overnight we'll have first-line equipment there to protect the homes."
Record temperature readings at Salt Lake International Airport of 106 at 5 p.m. Saturday combined with gusty winds to fuel the Mount Olympus blaze and others that erupted in northern Utah Saturday:
- Eighty acres burned between 1:30 and 3 p.m. near the small community of St. John in Tooele County's Rush Valley before being contained. A cause has not been determined.
- A fire spotted at 5:10 p.m. Saturday near the Wolf Mountain condominium resort just north of Pine View Reservoir in Ogden Canyon burned about five acres, threatening a radio transmitter, before it was contained. A dispatcher said the fire may be human-caused.
- A fire spotted at 5:10 p.m. Saturday in heavy timber 15 miles northeast of Logan had burned about 6 acres was still out of control later in the evening. The cause remained unknown.
- A fire believed to be human-caused on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake burned several acres after it was spotted about 5 p.m.
- Fires burning since Wednesday on Stansbury Island in the Great Salt Lake flared within containment lines, keeping fire-fighters from reaching an 8 p.m. Saturday control time they had anticipated when declaring the fires contained Friday evening.
A 2,264-acre fire burning near Cove Fort in Millard County since Wednesday is the only major fire in the state that firefighters were able to keep an upper hand on Saturday.
The Mount Olympus fire was first spotted at 2:50 p.m. Saturday and grew steadily to more than 50 acres as stiff winds blew it from a south-facing ridge to a north-facing ridge overlooking homes at the south end of Olympus Cove.
Limberg said the fire is considered suspicious because it started near a trail.
A member of one of the first Forest Service fire crews on the mountain encountered three youths, all about age 18 - and all carrying shovels.
"They were trying to help in the suppression effort at first," Lim-berg said. "But they may know more about the fire than they told us."
Known to fire officials only by first names Andy, Aaron and Ted - two of them blondes with goatee beards and the other having dark hair - officials hope to seek out the trio to further their investigation.
A helicopter carried firefighters onto the mountain at the onset of the blaze, but the gusting winds soon made that too dangerous. Several crews then had to hike up the mountain's rugged face to reach the blaze. Some 34 firefighters worked the fire on the ground while two helicopters carrying water buckets and a fire retardant bomber worked to slow the fire's advance from the air.
All firefighters were pulled off the mountain at dusk Saturday. The winds had calmed, leaving dozens of spotty fires visible in the dusk from as far away as State Street. "It's all up to Mother Nature overnight," Limberg said.