Despite flames, crews start fire rehab

Tom Gardner

Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2000 | 8:48 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - As one group of firefighters battled flames on the northeast front of the South Cricket blaze, other crews already had begun the job of repairing damage caused by the flames and by fighting them.

"We have a whole task force assigned to rehabilitation starting with the 'dozer lines and the roads," Bureau of Land Management spokesman Bill Roach said on Monday.

"We have a team coming in to start assessing what the fire did, what seed mixtures we need and what we can do about erosion," he said by telephone from Wells.

Eight miles to the northeast, the seemingly impossible job of surrounding 66,188 acres of burned and burning grass, sagebrush and pinon-juniper was 80 percent complete. Fire bosses hope for full containment on Wednesday, one week after a bolt of lightning hit the dust-dry area.

There have been no serious injuries and the only structural losses appear to be four camp trailers. Suppression costs have hit $1.3 million.

Well to the southeast, two buildings on the Hermitage Ranch in Lincoln County were overrun by the 15,774-acre Coyote fire burning in extreme east central Nevada. Crews struggled to build a line around half of its perimeter as it expanded eastward across the Utah line.

The Phillips Ranch Fire, which was estimated to have burned about 1,162 acres of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and Great Basin National Park in extreme eastern Nevada, still defies containment. A line was cut along 20 percent of its perimeter.

The Cottonwood fire southeast of Lovelock was 92 percent contained, at a cost of $620,000. Its size now is placed at 5,000 acres.

So far this year, 571 fires have consumed at least 333,144 acres in Nevada compared to last year's record 1.7 million acres. Nationally, more than 3.55 million acres have burned this year.