Mount Charleston wildfire is nearly contained

Mary Manning and Stephen Curran

Friday, July 30, 2004 | 11:11 a.m.

Helicopter pilot Ken Johnson of Casper, Wyo., spent three days flying over the 290-acre Robber's Fire. During a stop for fuel at sunset Thursday, he said the danger of erratic winds pushing flames out of the canyon was gone.

"It's not going anywhere," Johnson said. "It's boxed in a canyon."

So much fire retardant and water have been dropped on the fire that flames can't jump over the edge of the peak and threaten 400 homes in Kyle Canyon, Johnson said.

Johnson said that when he flew the Carson City fire ealier this month, every time a crew got a line down, the blaze jumped over it.

"That fire was out of control," he said.

Johnson piloted a Bravo-214 helicopter each day from Monday, when the fire started after a flatbed truck overturned about 12:30 p.m., through the end of the day Thursday.

His was one of four helicopters that firefighters used to spew water and red retardant on and around flames flaring up Fletcher's Peak, next to Kyle Canyon where log cabins and luxury homes have been built in five neighborhoods, many of which consist of a dense labrynth of steep, narrow streets and dirt roads.

Firefighters estimated 70 percent of the fire had been contained by Thursday night. By 6 p.m. today, the fire is expected to be fully contained, said Bill Paxton, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management working with an interstate and interagency mutual assistance program.

Officials were cautiously watching the winds today for a potential flare-up, but many of the firefighters are expected to start leaving today and the federal management team brought in to oversee the effort is scheduled to leave tomorrow morning.

Equipment and enough crews will remain at the fire scene, 23 miles northwest of Las Vegas, until all the hot spots are put out, Paxton said.

So far, it has cost $911,000 to battle the wildland fire that once was estimated at 1,500 acres, Paxton said. Smoke and treacherous terrain prevented fire crews from drawing a realistic estimate at first.

Five firefighters were injured, but none of those injuries was life-threatening, Paxton said.

As of Thursday night, there were 353 people attacking the fire, 46 of them elite hot-shot crews, Paxton said. Hot shots tackle the most difficult aspect of wildland fires. The hot shots are basically living along the mountain's ridge for now, Paxton said.

U.S. Forest Service public information officer Rob Deyerberg arrived at the Robber's Fire early Thursday and recognized the potential for disaster with homes clustered in Kyle Canyon's drought-stricken forest.

"We have to learn to live with fire and expect it," Deyerberg said.

Mount Charleston residents relaxed and went back to their homes and businesses Thursday as the threat of smoke and flames disappeared from the peak north of their subdivisions.

Barbara Orcutt, whose family owns the Mount Charleston Lodge, reassured her 6-year-old grandson, Jacob, that everything would be alright.

"All the kids were raised with Smokey the Bear," Orcutt said. Every day this week, Grandma Orcutt got a call from Jacob in Las Vegas to find out whether the wooden Smokey the Bear had survived the fire. He's posted at the Spring Mountain Visitor's Center with a sign that tells travelers the fire danger is "very high."

"If you have children or grandchildren, this is a very traumatic experience," Orcutt said. She took time away from polishing the lodge's restaurant tables and bar to take Jacob down and photographed him next to Smokey the Bear.

The lodge has been closed since Monday afternoon, putting 50 staff members out of work, Orcutt said.

"We've got four scrubbing up a storm in the kitchen right now," Orcutt said. "We're trying to keep as many as possible on payroll."

It's difficult to imagine few, if any, homeowners near Mount Charleston who could have been better prepared than Rose Meranto.

Having owned her small but well-kept cabin in the unincorporated subdivision of Old Town, a hodgepodge of old logging cabins and luxury A-frames, Meranto has seen almost everything -- from mountain lions to both small and large fires.

Her biggest scare, she said, came in 1981 when a fire that started on the mountain began creeping toward the Mount Charleston Lodge, near her home. She escaped that fire unscathed, but since then has kept her important documents and beloved photographs packed at the faintest smell of smoke, Meranto said.

On late Thursday morning, even as crews brought the fire under control, she kept her Lexus sport utility vehicle packed and ready to go.

"They (firefighters) have a handle on things so I'm confident," Meranto said. "But this one is a little too close."

It's such experiences that make Meranto a kind of "matriarch" for the neighborhood, which sprouted in the 1930s as a logging hamlet, said Las Vegas businessman Ron Claggett, who owns a vacation home down the street from Meranto on Yellow Pine Road.

Although Claggett bought his home, a one bedroom fixer-upper built in 1952, in October 2003, he is no stranger to wildfires, having seen his other vacation home in Arizona's White Mountains threatened by the Shohloh fire in 2002.

With that experience in mind, he began bagging up dry debris weeks before the fire broke out, something he said he wishes his neigbors would do.

"It would be proactive," Claggett said. "If the wind crossed (Fletcher's Peak), we would've been in jeopardy."

After Southern California's devastating brush fires in September 2003, fire investigators discovered that 90 percent of all homes that had cleared away dying trees and shrubs and built the home with fire-proof materials had survived.

Without taking those steps, less than 20 percent of the houses survived, Deyerberg said.

On Monday, Richy Conant, 13, had become worried when he saw smoke billowing above Mount Charleston while he was visiting Lake Mead. Conant had become a kind of celebrity in the Old Town neighborhood after he and friend Zach Olson were reported missing near their homes during the fire. They turned up later though, to the relief of authorities and mountain residents.

Conant said he had lived in the neighborhood for about three years but had not been as worried for his home until this fire.

"It's pretty scary," he said. "It's too bad I can't be out there helping the firemen."

Lee Canyon Road, which had been closed to the general public, was re-opened Thursday and Kyle Canyon Road, the primary route for Meranto and scores of other homeowners to reach their dwellings, re-opened to residents and firefighters.

By Thursday afternoon, firefighters like Barstow, Calif.-based Keith Mora, brought in as part of California's Office of Emergency Services, sat camped out in each of the four loosely organized neighborhoods.

If the fire were to cross the ridge, it would be Mora's job, along with Metro Police, to help evacuate the homes. With such measures not needed that afternoon, Mora sat in the shade on Rainbow Boulevard reading a Readers Digest, brought in by a neighborhood woman who Mora said routinely cooks for the men and women watching her street.

"All you need is a hot ember flying over into this," Mora said, pointing to dead and dying pine and fir trees.

A Barstow fire engine sat right next to a hydrant.

"If anything starts, I can pour lots and lots of water on it," Mora said. "Earlier they (the residents) were nervous, but now they're dropping off books and bringing food and other things."

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