Mountain fire may move toward homes

Friday, Sept. 16, 2005 | 11:13 a.m.

Firefighters were worried that gusty winds expected this afternoon could push a wildfire toward 100 homes in the rural community of Mountain Springs, about 31 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

The Potosi Fire burned 35 acres late Thursday afternoon north and east of Mountains Springs on State Route 160, the highway between Las Vegas and Pahrump.

The fire quieted overnight and no significant damage or injuries had been reported this morning. Spotty phone communication in the rural area made it difficult to gauge exactly how many acres had burned by this morning, Bob Leinbach, a Clark County Fire Department spokesman, said.

Crews this morning had created a buffer between the fire and nearby homes, although gusts appeared to be blowing away from the structures, he said. By 9:30 this morning, a small storage shed had been destroyed by the blaze.

At least 25 personnel from the county fire department and 40 from other agencies this morning continued to fight the blaze.

The National Weather Service said this morning that 25-30 mile per hour gusts of winds will blow through southern Nevada starting around noon and the wind gusts will peak between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

The wind will be felt in the area of the fire, said Clay Morgan, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Las Vegas.

Some power outages had been reported in some of the homes, Leinbach said, but he did not have an exact number.

Heather Thompson, bartender at the Mountain Springs saloon, said she had been hearing updates on the fire after it started late Thursday afternoon.

"We saw it," Thompson said. "It was right next to some homes."

By sunset, the flames were moving away from the town's buildings, she said.

Thompson said her father is a firefighter with the Mountain Springs Fire Department. He joined about 50 firefighters from federal, state and local departments, Leinbach said.

"And more are on the way," Leinbach said. Fire crews stayed on the mountain throughout the night.

In addition to Mountain Springs, Blue Diamond and Clark County fire departments, crews from the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Nevada Division of Forestry and the National Park Service battled the blaze in rugged terrain, Leinbach said.

Clark County firefighters helped supply water to helicopters from a tank before the aircraft attacked the flames.

Authorities limited traffic on State Route 160 to one lane and escorted vehicles through the fire zone, a move the Nevada Highway Patrol is prepared to repeat today, Leinbach said.

The National Weather Service has issued a fire weather watch from noon until 7 p.m. today, Weather Service meteorologist Jon Adair said. Forecasters expect southwest winds up to 30 mph with stronger gusts in the slopes of the Spring Mountains combined with low humidity, Adair said.

"That could create hazardous fire behavior," Adair said.

The cause of the fire has not been determined, but even though summer's scorching temperatures have ended, there is plenty of tinder-dry brush and trees in the mountains, said Beth Short, a Forest Service spokeswoman.

"I guess fire season isn't over yet," Short said.

Mountain Springs was previously threatened by a wildland fire that started June 23 and scorched areas southwest of the town.

More than 1 million acres of land in Nevada have been burned this fire season, which still isn't over, said State Forester Pete Anderson. Anderson told the state Interim Finance Committee that of the 1.1 million acres that have been blackened, nearly 750,000 acres are in Clark and Lincoln counties in Southern Nevada.

Major fires also occurred in Elko, Humboldt and Eureka counties. Smaller wildland fires scorched several other counties.

During the 2004 fire season, just 41,000 acres had burned, Anderson said. The number of fires dropped from 900 in 2004 to about 700 this year.

The 2004 fire season burned more structures, especially 17 homes destroyed in the Carson City area. Very little structural damage has occurred this year.

This year's burned acres did not set a record. The fire season of 1999 charred 1.8 million acres of Nevada lands. Lightning sparked many of the blazes. The largest fire in the state was the 288,220-acre Dunn Glen Complex fire.

The Interim Finance Committee approved $2.5 million to help pay firefighting bills. Three-quarters of that money could be reimbursed to the state by the federal government because most of the fires were on federal lands.

Sun reporter Stephen Curran and The Associated Press contributed to this story.