When Sally Wright drove away from her hilltop home Tuesday with her children and pets packed into her car, she thought she might be overreacting.
At about 7:15 that morning, the lights flickered while the family prepared for the day. Their home soon would lose power completely. The wind howled through the chimney, a fairly common occurrence, Wright said. She called a neighbor who told her to look out her window at a nearby mountain adorned with a giant white ”U,” for Uintah, on it.
“I was shocked to see not just distant smoke, but giant plumes of orange flames just rolling toward the ‘U,’” Wright remembered Thursday.
She called another neighbor, a good friend whose home also sits atop a hill. ”She said, ’I’m grabbing my wedding album and leaving.’”
Wright and the neighbor stopped at their mailboxes and said goodbye as they left the area. “Within an hour,” the neighbor’s home was engulfed by the wildfire and her roof had caved in, Wright said.
The mountainside flames Wright had seen grew into the 619-acre Uintah Fire.
News reports of the devastation felt personal to Wright as she watched footage of homes where she’d taken her children trick-or-treating and enjoyed visits and parties.
“Those ‘involved structures’ were my neighborhood,” she said.
On Thursday night, firefighters had the fire 85 percent contained, allowing remaining residents of about 100 homes — including Wright — to finally return.
Officials have said the fire is “human caused,” but the specific origin remained under investigation, fire information officer Kim Osborn stated. A human-caused wildfire could be the result of human error or man-made machines, Osborn clarified.
The fire erupted in parched grass, brush and shrubs at the mouth of Weber Canyon early Tuesday morning, destroying three “primary residence” homes and three other structures, Osborn said. At the height of the blaze, about 1,000 residents of the Uintah Highlands area were evacuated.
About 170 firefighters, assisted by water- and fire-retardant-bearing helicopters, doused hot spots and closed containment lines Thursday.
Winds, which had gusted to 40 mph earlier in the week along the fire lines, quieted down considerably Thursday. Osborn characterized the blaze's activity as "smoldering around the ground with occasional flare-ups."
Wright had gone home briefly Wednesday to survey the damage and gather a few items for her children. The blackened fire line comes up to her yard, and a wall in the backyard carries singe marks, but her home remained untouched by the flames.
A neighbor’s, however, was reduced to “a pile of bricks.” In the rubble, Wright said she saw the metal remains of an ice cream machine her friends had purchased to use and share at parties and neighborhood gatherings.
Another machine can be bought, Wright said, but it felt like a “gut punch” to see something she’d associated with so much happiness in ruins.
No other homes were under threat on Thursday, officials said, and natural gas, electrical and utility personnel reportedly worked to clear the last of the evacuated residences for reoccupation.
Uintah Fire Chief Bill Pope said hand crews were mopping up the last of “a couple hot spots” in the area southeast of Woodland Drive.
Evacuees “know it’ll be OK,” Wright said, but “the inconvenience and frustration is really wearing on everybody.”
They are “going back and forth between relief and grief,” she added, “both grateful and exhausted at the same time.”