Wildfire spreads in Virgin Mountains

Monday, June 21, 2004 | 11:22 a.m.

The fire that has been burning for more than four days in the Virgin Mountains, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, had consumed 8,000 acres of pinyon and juniper pine trees and was about 20 percent contained this morning, a Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman said.

But the Nickel fire, as officials have dubbed it, was still growing. It is located about 15 miles south of Bunkerville.

Some abandoned corrals had burned, but no other structures were in danger from the fire that started about 8:28 p.m. on Wednesday, the spokeswoman, Dorothy Harvey, said.

On Sunday, firefighters reached the place where the fire started and concluded definitively that it was caused by lightning, Harvey said. There were more than 100,000 lightning strikes in Southern Nevada on Wednesday.

Road closures were planned to keep four-wheel-drive enthusiasts out of the area around the fire.

About 375 firefighters were working on the blaze, which sent a cloud of white smoke over the mountains as flames leaping hundreds of feet in the air could be seen from Interstate 15 near Mesquite on Sunday.

More firefighters were being called out to fire today, Harvey said.

Lime Kiln Road and Hungry Valley Road are to be closed indefinitely because the popular recreational routes are dangerously close to the fire, Harvey said.

Harvey said high winds intensified the fire over the weekend. It doubled in size on Sunday night, moving east to cross the border into Arizona.

The flames roared through dry timber and brush in a wilderness study area. Most of the 6,560 area is owned by the Bureau of Land Management,

The area contains important archaeological sites -- shelter caves, petroglyphs and camp sites left by early human inhabitants of the area. It is also a habitat for the desert tortoise, a threatened species, and the Gila monster, Harvey said.