Trout Canyon wildfire rages on

Mary Manning and Jace Radke

Monday, Aug. 7, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.

Weary crews battling the 675-acre Trout Canyon fire overnight slowed flames racing up Griffith Peak, 30 miles west of Las Vegas.

Firefighters dug a line in the dirt on both sides of the wildland blaze, which this morning was still moving toward the peak, Forest Service spokeswoman Paula Cote said.

Winds Sunday carried the flames rapidly up the mountain, keeping crews from getting ahead of it, Cote said.

Tom Dean of Alaska, the fire incident commander, said that if all goes well, the fire could be 50 percent contained by tonight.

But Cote advised caution.

"We still have another day of extremes with high temperatures and low humidity," she said.

None of the 60 homes in the Trout Canyon region were in any danger, Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said. The blaze has burned to within 10 miles of State Route 160, the main highway between Las Vegas and Pahrump. Trout Canyon runs southwest from Griffith Peak toward the highway.

Officials believe the fire was sparked by lightning on Thursday.

More gusts of 20 mph were expected to ignite new flames today among small groups of trees in the rugged Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

"Everything out here is so dry. It's drier than the kiln-dried lumber that you buy at the yard," U.S. Forest Service firefighter Lee Nelson said.

Four air tankers and a helicopter resumed the attack at 8 a.m. today, and a total of 175 firefighters from Clark County, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia were on the scene.

On Sunday afternoon one those firefighters, Craig Burgess, was daydreaming about relaxing at the beach on the outer banks of North Carolina as he prepared to make his way into the Spring Mountains to dig fire lines around the blaze.

"I've had one week off since July 12, and you can bet I'd be on the beach back home if I wasn't here," Burgess, one of 40 firefighters from North Carolina, said. "In the last month I've been to Louisiana, Idaho and Montana fighting fires."

Donald Strickland, Burgess' crew boss, said that he'd rather be catfishing than fighting the blaze but added that he could take care of the fire in no time if he had something he left behind in North Carolina.

"If I had my tractor, I'd just go right up the side of the mountain and plow that sucker," Strickland said. "It would be the little plow that could."

Most of the firefighters in Trout Canyon seemed to be in good spirits Sunday, with some joking about hitting a jackpot at a Strip casino. But behind the good humor are some worn-out workers, Nelson said.

"Everybody is tired out here," he said. "We've gone to 13-hour shifts, and then you're supposed to get one off, but everybody is short-handed."

The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, is monitoring 64 major fires that have burned more than 914,700 acres in Nevada, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming and Washington.

"There are about 250 standing orders for air tankers and 700 for hotshot crews that are going unfilled throughout the country," Nelson said.

Dean worked his tired crews for only about six hours Sunday night, letting the air tankers pound the fire from above.

"The best time to fight this thing is at night, but you guys are so beat up, and the terrain is so bad up there that we're only going to midnight," Dean told his crew bosses before they headed into the mountains about 6 p.m. Sunday.

The air tankers are flying out of Bishop, Calif., while the helicopter picks up water from an inflated, man-made pool of water just a few miles from the fire line.

The fire is now considered the top priority fire in Nevada, said Nelson, who is helping to manage the aircraft being used to drop loads of between 75 and 100 gallons of water on the fire.

Saturday afternoon only about 150 acres of pinion pine and juniper were ablaze above Trout Canyon, but then the wind kicked up and sent the fire running, Nelson said.

"It was less than 15 minutes, maybe only seven or eight, and it started moving," Nelson said.

The fire reached elevations as high as 9,000 feet, where 3,000-year-old bristlecone pines likely burned Sunday, fire officials said.

A second fire in the vicinity of Cold Creek Canyon, about 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas, flared up Saturday morning, and the air tankers and their loads of fire-retardant foam were diverted there to slow down the 30-acre blaze. A California hotshot crew and a team of smoke jumpers have been called in to assist with the fire near Cold Creek, according to Nelson and Cote.

Hotshot crews are specialized teams of experienced wildland firefighters, while smoke jumpers parachute from planes into hard-to-reach areas to contain fires.

A small fire also was reported about 4 p.m. Sunday near Big Timber Spring Road, about 12 miles west of U.S. 95 and Indian Springs. A Forest Service engine crew and a helicopter were sent to the fire, and a Bureau of Land Management smoke jumper team was called down from Carson City, Cote said.

The Trout Canyon fire is the biggest in Southern Nevada since June's Buck Springs wildfire that charred about 2,000 acres on the western side of Mount Charleston.

Campfires in all areas of the Spring Mountains, including campgrounds and picnic areas, have been banned because of the extreme danger for wildfires. Smoking cigarettes is confined to vehicles, buildings or areas 3 feet wide and free of any flammable debris.

Smoke from wildland fires in Nevada and Southern California continued to pollute Southern Nevada's air. The Clark County Health District did not issue a health advisory today.