Final mopup begins on Mount Charleston fire

Dan Kulin

Monday, Aug. 2, 2004 | 10:53 a.m.

Off-and-on thunderstorms soaked Mount Charleston Sunday, as Mother Nature put some finishing touches on the end of a week-long battle with a fire that scorched nearly 300 acres of mountainside and threatened nearby homes.

The Robber's Fire, named for the Robber's Roost hiking trail there, is considered fully contained but not completely out yet. Additional firefighters brought in to fight the blaze were expected to leave Sunday night or today, officials said.

Many spent part of Sunday looking for more smoldering pockets among the 296 acres burned since about 12:30 p.m. Monday, when the fire started after a flatbed truck overturned and caught fire on Deer Creek Road.

In between the afternoon rains Sunday, Mount Charleston visitor Dana Kraft pointed to a spot just below the ridge along Fletchers Peak where what looked like a puff of smoke was rising slowly from the blackened earth.

"It's horrible. Ive never seen anything like it," Kraft, a 33-year-old computer specialist from Las Vegas, said. "Its just weird how barren it is."

"It used to be all green," his wife, Kathy Kraft, said. "It's a real shame. It's sad."

Residents said they were lucky it wasn't worse.

"The only thing I was worried about was the wind changing," full-time mountain resident Todd DeMaio said. "If the wind had changed to the south that would have been real bad."

The fire was contained to the north side of a ridge line atop Kyle Canyon, which has about 400 homes. The fear was that wind could push the fire over the ridge and into the canyon, and for most of last week the general public wasn't allowed on the mountain.

Closer to the fire, firefighters and police had evacuated eight residences in Deer Creek and Camp Stimpson as well as a Girl Scout camp and the Spring Mountain Youth Camp.

U.S. Forest Service officials said they would have evacuated the homes in Kyle Canyon if the fire reached the ridge, but it was kept about 100 yards below the ridge line.

DeMaio, 40, said he packed a few important papers and some clothes before leaving the mountain Wednesday to spend a few days in California.

Eric Smallridge said there wasn't really any one thing he wanted to save from his family's cabin.

"You'd have to take the whole thing," Smallridge, 25, said about the cabin. "That has a lot of sentimental value; my parents were married there, and every Christmas we were up there. We could rebuild it but we can't replace it."

Smallridge, a chef, said that while the last week was scary, he was hopeful the fire would stay on the other side of the ridge. And it did.

"But this is what we needed, the weather," he said as large raindrops fell.

Others agreed.

"This rain is good, and I'm wishing for more and more rain," said Liz Caruso, who bought a house in the Old Town area of Kyle Canyon in April.

"We were concerned. And I was really happy the winds were going north," Caruso said. "But we weren't going to come up until the fire was over. I've got insurance, and anyway, what could you do?"

Ken Jordan, leader of a Forest Service fire crew from central California called the Sierra Hotshots, said that while the fire was 100 percent contained, it probably won't be called out until the burned area is walked over again by firefighters, which he said will probably happen this week.

Robbie McAboy, a forest service spokeswoman, said the fire probably would have rekindled Saturday if it were going to again, because Saturday was an especially windy day, with gusts so strong authorities stopped helicopter flights to the burned area.

McAboy said 453 people were working on the fire at its peak. On Sunday, that number was down to 70.

As of Saturday, the fire had cost $1.5 million to fight, she said.

The steep terrain made it difficult to fight, helicopters were used to carry some firefighters above the blaze, and helicopters and airplanes dumped water and fire retardant on the forest roughly 23 miles from the Las Vegas Valley.

And, while this threat appears over, McAboy and others said the area is still dry from years of drought.

"We are still under extreme fire conditions," McAboy said.

Her point was made again by Smokey the Bear, who holds a sign outside the Spring Mountains Visitors Center warning: "Fire danger extreme today."