Open fires, grills banned

Annie Flanzraich

Friday, July 1, 2005 | 9:49 a.m.

Surrounded by charcoal grills, which had been taped up to prevent people from using them during the Fourth of July weekend, Doran Magen and Reudor Grinberg, both 22, cooked their lunch on a portable propane stove.

Park Service officials looked on with satisfaction because Grinberg and Magen's stove is one of the few devices allowed at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area this weekend.

Grinberg and Magen are visiting from Israel, but they knew the rules. "It is allowed, so that is OK. It's not an open fire," Grinberg said.

Park rangers fear that not everyone who will be visiting the park this weekend -- which is traditionally the area's second busiest -- will be as well informed as Grinberg and Magen. Open fires from wood and charcoal are prohibited at the park this weekend.

The park service wants to get the word out about the restriction before visitors come to the lake this weekend expecting to be able to grill.

But too many people are going to go to Lake Mead and Lake Mohave thinking that they will be able to fire up the charcoal grill, Roxanne Dey, the recreation area's spokeswoman, said. "They are going to have a cooler full of food that will go bad," she predicted.

The lake is surrounded by an above average grass and brush growth this summer season and just one spark from a fire could light up the dried vegetation, said Cobie Cavanaugh, an assistant fire manager with the National Park Service.

The results could be deadly.

"Fire can move the length of a football field in a minute," Cavanaugh said. "And you can't run that fast."

Along with all wood and charcoal campfires, fireworks of any kind are prohibited at the park this weekend. Cavanaugh said even legal safe and sane fireworks could cause a fire and are banned.

In light of the brush fires that lit up around the valley after lightning strikes on June 20, Joanna Wilson, a public information officer with the National Fire Prevention and Education team, said visitors to the Lake Mead Recreation area should be careful with anything that could cause a spark.

"It is very dry out there and it is only going to take a spark," said Joanna Wilson, a public information officer with the park service's National Fire Prevention and Education team. "We can't prevent the lightening fires, but we can prevent the human ones."

There will be a lot of humans at Lake Mead posing fire threats.

Dey said the park service was expecting upwards of 170,000 people at the lake for the three-day Fourth of July weekend. The last time the Fourth of July landed on three-day weekend was 2003.

Temperatures will reach 115 degrees this weekend at the park, according to the National Weather Service. Karen Welden, a game warden with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, said that the water temperature is about 80 degrees.

Park officials will also be emphasizing boating safety this weekend, looking for boat skippers who are breaking the law by drinking too much while piloting watercraft.

The legal blood/alcohol limit out on the water is the same as on the highway 0.08, Welden said.

Dey also warned that boaters to stay away from the shoreline to avoid an accident like the one that happened on Sunday when Robin G. Land, 48, was killed and four passengers injured.

"It's really important when you get closer to the shoreline to go slow and to look for hazards that might be under the water," Dey said.