Wednesday, July 28, 2004 | 11:05 a.m.
Cold Creek firefighter Mike Adams said he watched a flaming fir tree streak like a shooting star on the mountain above him during a 16-hour stint on the line of the 1,500-acre Robber's Fire burning northwest of Las Vegas.
"It was awesome," Adams said Tuesday night, describing how the tree's trunk tumbled end over end, sparks flying into the night.
Having lived in Cold Creek, on the northwest side of Mount Charleston, for 36 years, Adams said he remembered the Robber's Roost trail fondly. "It was a place for us to party," he said about how friends hauled a keg of beer up the trail under a blanket.
"The burned area will take so long to grow back," Adams said.
The Robber's Fire is the No. 1 priority for wildland firefighters nationwide because it is 23 miles from fast-growing Las Vegas and there are 400 homes within a few miles of the flames in the Spring Mountains, said Gerald Rohnert, spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.
Federal, state and local firefighters are "cautiously optimistic" that the Robber's Fire might be contained by Thursday or Friday, Rohnert said. With a national fire attack team arriving, the 449 firefighters, police officers, support crews, paramedics and communications experts are expected mount a fierce assault on the blaze today, he said.
Two hot-shot crews are expected to attempt reaching either side of the flaming canyon today, Rohnert said. Hot-shot crews are firefighters who go into the hardest and toughest parts of a blaze to contain its spread.
Although no fire crew has reached the 10,000-foot level to dig a line in the dirt to stop the fire, flames were considered 20 percent contained as of this morning, Rohnert said.
Fire officials were concerned this morning that the humidity level had dropped and is expected to be low through the end of the week, meaning the brush is dry. They were encouraged that winds were blowing away from the nearest houses, so if the wind spreads the fire it would be away from residential areas.
The fire started Monday when a truck overturned and exploded, sparking a fire in the brush that quickly grew.
Metro Police and the Nevada Highway Patrol continued blocking traffic on Lee Canyon Road, Kyle Canyon Road and Deer Creek Road.
Kyle Canyon Road is the main road leading to Mount Charleston, but only those working on the mountain fire or living in one of Kyle Canyon's five subdivisions were allowed to enter because fire danger from capricious winds, dry air and hot temperatures can change the blaze in moments, Rohnert said.
"There have been incidents when we thought a fire was out, then the winds came up and the flames returned," he said.
If the fire crosses the ridge, 50 Metro Police units will alert residents first by bullhorn, then knock on every door of the 400 homes for a mandatory evacuation, Metro spokesman Jose Montoya said.
Worried mountain residents expressed concern at a standing-room-only meeting Tuesday night at the Mount Charleston Library.
"Just tell them we're very concerned," 2-year resident Allen Hirschorn said of the fire.
Ralph and Nichia Hamilton watched from the side of the road as columns of smoke rose from the canyon at sunset Tuesday.
They vowed not to leave the mountain. Nichia's 87-year-old father, Charles Pesca, has been living on the mountain since he installed plumbing in an old military building now used by the Forest Service, she said.
"He's not leaving," Hamilton said of her father.
Ralph Hamilton, who has lived on the mountain since 1967, said he has fought forest fires in Cold Creek Canyon, Kyle and other hot spots in the Spring Mountains over the years.
North of the location of the Robber's Fire, the 1980 Cold Creek blaze that burned more than 20,000 acres was one of the worst he has ever seen, Hamilton said.
"This one," he said, nodding toward the Robber's burn, "is a difficult one to fight."
Tightly knit forests of pinyon pine, Ponderosa pine, mahogany and oak have flourished as more and more people moved up the mountain, he said.
Older forest growth in Kyle Canyon, where the majority of people on the mountain live, supported up to 60 trees per acre, Hamilton said.
"Now it's hundreds of trees per acre," Hamilton said. "They've got to thin the trees."
When veteran firefighter Duffy Grismanauskas, whose home is threatened by the wildfire, arrived on the scene Monday, the blaze had consumed less than an acre.
Within 15 minutes, it was consuming more than 100 acres, he said.
Such a large-scale wildfire, he said, was only a matter of time.
"The conditions here have been prime for many years," Grismanauskas said. "But they (crews) have got a handle on it. Nature just can't have its course."
Grismanauskas's wife, Becky, said she felt relieved Tuesday night that they could no longer see smoke blowing over the mountains toward their home.
All day Tuesday the flames were bottled up between Fletcher's Peak and Mummy Mountain, incident commander Larry Benham said, preventing the fire from expanding beyond 1,500 acres.
Firefighters fear that two bone-dry drainages flaming on the northwest face of Fletcher's Peak will merge into one fire, torching tinder-dry trees and brush into a ball of flame, Benham said. That could spark a disaster in Kyle Canyon.
Since the fire began about 12:30 p.m. Monday, three firefighters received minor injuries, such as sprained ankles, from working in the rugged terrain, Benham said.
Three helicopters attacked the fire from the air, buzzing in circles, picking up water and retardant then pouring it on flaming trees and brush. Firefighting helicopters are allowed to fly from sunup to sundown.
By Tuesday afternoon, firefighters were working to keep the blaze at 1,500 acres, fearful it may jump a ridge where 400 homes are in harm's way, Lee Nelson, deputy operations chief for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said.
Two single-engine tanker planes, out of seven available nationwide, criss-crossed the smoky skies above Fletcher's Peak, dousing the flames with water and a fire retardant, Nelson said.
Overnight a plane equipped with infrared detectors flew over the smoking site in a steep canyon, where firefighters hoped to measure the fire accurately and detect hot spots. The data will be analyzed this morning.
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