According to Utah Fire Info, the Fremont Fire was reported around 11:11 a.m. Wednesday. A post on the Utah Fire Info Facebook page attributed the cause of the blaze to a lightning strike.

Rick Cooper, fire warden with the Weber Fire District, told the Standard-Examiner Thursday morning that, as of 10 a.m., the fire had burned around 179 acres and that the same adverse weather that started the fire had also been aiding firefighters while keeping them off the island Thursday.

“We had quite a bit of precipitation over the fire last night and through this morning,” he said. “Based on weather conditions, we don’t have any crews on the fire with the lightning and the rain and the strong outflow winds, so we’ve held everybody kind of on the mainland, not on the island. We’re going to kind of monitor the fire from here. If we do see some activity, we’ll put them in the boats and put them across onto the island. … And then, of course, the inclement weather we had yesterday afternoon and today has basically helped us out a ton. We don’t need to put crews on it today based on the amount of rainfall that we’ve seen.”

He said that the fire site has posed some challenges for firefighters due to the fact that it’s on an island in the Great Salt Lake.

“The biggest issue was access to it,” he said. “It took us quite a bit of time to establish  airboats to get crews shuttled over to the fire and start picking it up direct,” he said. “We were able to utilize fixed wing and rotary aircraft initially to try to slow the progression of the fire until we could get crews on the fire.”

Utah Fire Info’s Facebook post also mentioned that aerial assets needed to spend time searching for a suitable water source as the salinity of the Great Salt Lake prevents its water from being used in firefighting.

As Utah Fire Info updated its Facebook page with updates on the Fremont Fire, a handful of users commented on the update posts questioning the need to expend firefighting resources on the fire at all given the island’s remoteness and lack of modern infrastructure.

Cooper noted that, while it lacks any modern infrastructure or structures, Fremont Island isn’t totally barren.

“Fremont Island has got some historical stuff on it,” he said. “There is a cabin out there that is historical. There are some grave sites on the island that’s historical, and then Kit Carson’s etched cross is out there as well. So we do have some historical and archaeological sites on the island.”

He said it’s because of these historical factors and state policy that crews were dispatched to fight the wildfire.

“The state of Utah policy is we will do what we can to protect private, state, and public lands due to fire,” he said. “It’s just grass and sage, yes, but there is some historical value out there.  … and our job is to protect the lands — all lands in Utah — in the event of a wildland fire.”

Cooper said the fire has largely been relegated to the northwest corner of the island and has not impacted any of the historical sites so far.

He said that crews will continue monitoring the fire but expected that they will be able to release assets by the end of Thursday due to the additional precipitation expected in the region.

“If it does flare back, up we’ll reassess the situation and take the appropriate measures to mitigate the fire,” he said. “We’re grateful for the rain and hopefully we can put the 2026 fire season to bed.”

Cooper saida round 50 firefighters fought the Fremont Fire.