A B-1B Lancer launches flares as it drops its load of bombs during a fire-power demonstration on the Nellis Air Force Range in 2004. Nellis officials are investigating why two B-1B flares were dropped near a home in Lincoln County earlier in 2004. Photo by John Gurzinski.
Officials at Nellis Air Force Base have launched a probe into why flares from a B-1B bomber were dropped near a home in Lincoln County and why the incident apparently wasn't investigated for almost two years.
One of the flares, which burn hot enough to confuse heat-seeking missiles, hit the ground and exploded about 50 feet away from a woman and some horses.
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The other flare was found unexploded on the same property about two months later and was kept at the Lincoln County sheriff's office in Alamo until it was finally retrieved by the Air Force earlier this month.
The formal investigation came as the result of a March 7 public meeting Nellis officials held with residents of Lincoln County's Pahranagat Valley, who are upset by training flights and mock dogfights that spill out over their rural area from the nearby Nellis Air Force Range.
Col. Harvey Hammond, who oversees the day-to-day operation of the range, ordered the investigation after he spoke to Lincoln County sheriff's Capt. Gary Davis about the dropped flares.
"We are taking this one seriously because of the dangers involved with flares dropping on public lands," said Mike Estrada, Nellis' civilian deputy public affairs officer.
Estrada could not predict how long the investigation might take, but he said the results would be released to the public once they became available.
"In complexity, it's almost like the same investigation we'd do if an aircraft crashed," he said. "This is compounded by the fact that it took place 18 months ago."
The reason for that delay is also a "significant part of the investigation," said Estrada, who also serves as director of Nellis' range outreach program.
The first incident took place in spring 2004, as Revella Schmutz was saddling some horses next to a barn on her property in the tiny town of Hiko, 115 miles north of Las Vegas. The exploding flare spooked the horses but no one was hurt.
Schmutz said she and her husband Ray reported what had happened, and someone from the Air Force came out to take photos and collect what was left of the device.
The second flare turned up in one of the Schmutzes' pastures in June of that year. This time, Lincoln County Deputy Keith Bowman was sent out to collect it.
Bowman said he picked up the 10-inch-long silver tube with his bare hands and took it back to the sheriff's station in Alamo, where it sat in a locked evidence room until the Air Force came to get it on March 14.
Bowman said he has worked as a law enforcement officer in the Pahranagat Valley for 20 years and has found debris from burned out flares before.
He said he never worried about the flare he picked up from the Schmutzes property because it looked as if the device's detonator had gone off but the rest of the flare failed to ignite. "If it was going to explode, it would have exploded when it hit the ground," he said.
Estrada is not so sure about that.
"We would never assume anything. Those of us with access to the range, we are taught over and over again to never touch anything," he said.
The flare in question "burns at several thousand degrees. It could have taken the whole (sheriff's) building down if it had ignited somehow," Estrada said.
But if the flare was so dangerous, Bowman and others wonder why it took so long for someone from the Air Force to come get it.
"They were called" in June 2004, Bowman said. "They were aware we had it."
Estrada said Nellis investigators are looking into that.
They also hope to determine whether the two flares that fell on the Schmutzes' property were dropped at the same time by the same aircraft, Estrada said.
