Columnist Susan Snyder: Crews work to prevent future fires

Monday, July 26, 2004 | 8:12 a.m.

Maud Naroll's words in the wake of Carson City's Waterfall Fire likely reflect the sentiments of many:

"We are very lucky, and extremely grateful to a fire crew we will probably never meet," she wrote in an e-mail July 16, the day she and her husband, David Gissen, were allowed to return to their hillside home.

They grabbed the dog and evacuated two days earlier, as the fire roared a half-mile upwind. Their ducks, geese and chickens stayed behind, with the former two on the pond and the latter able to fly off whenever they wanted.

"The fire burned through the sagebrush to the north side of our chain-link fence, burned our large willow patch outside the fence, scorched the front of the 1959 cab-forward Jeep David had mostly restored and burned a corner inside our fence upwind from the house," her missive says.

Flames also scorched the exterior of a propane tank outside their home. But other than that, everything was intact.

And Naroll gives a lot of credit to fire fuel reduction recommendations federal officials gave homeowners last year, and to the state inmate crews who cleared away excess brush.

Tim Rochelle, of the Nevada Division of Forestry in Carson City, said state corrections inmate crews had finished eradicating overgrown vegetation -- in some areas just days before the July 14 fire.

The Waterfall blaze apparently started from an illegal campfire in Kings Canyon west of Carson City. It devoured 15 homes, scorched 8,723 acres and raged out of control for two days before a crew of more than 260 firefighters contained the flames.

"We still have more work to do," Rochelle said Friday, a week after most residents returned home -- or to what was left of them.

For the past week inmate crews have been making sure all hot spots and smoldering underbrush is extinguished within 100 feet of the fire's perimeter. They're tilling burned-out areas with rakes and bulldozers to prevent people from creating illegal off-road vehicle routes and to avert erosion.

"In the short term we're looking at slope stabilization and major watershed protection over the next year and beyond," Rochelle said.

Dewey Warner, fire management officer for the U.S. Forest Service in Las Vegas, was in Cold Creek Friday afternoon scouting out possible wildfire prevention plans in the tiny mountain community about 50 miles from Las Vegas.

Fuel reduction measures similar to those used in Carson City are ongoing up on Mount Charleston, he said. A 200-foot-wide fire break now embraces the Rainbow subdivision in Kyle Canyon, and plans are being made for such work around the Echo Canyon homes nearby.

The populated areas of Kyle and Lee canyons haven't fallen to massive wildfire flames, he said. But the fires happen. He noted Cold Creek was threatened by one in 1982.

"You can still see the scar from that," Warner said.

Decades of land rehabilitation. Lifetimes of memories erased. One thoughtless act.

"Others we know were not so lucky," Naroll wrote. "Our friend's picture was apparently on the cover of the Boston Globe, looking at the foundation and chimney -- all that remains of the house she grew up in."