Clark County strike teams join Northern Nevada effort
Two Clark County Fire Department volunteer strike teams left Las Vegas on Friday morning and headed for Elko to help battle wildfires that have scorched thousands of acres.
The 13 firefighters and five brush trucks were expected to reach Elko on Friday night and start their seven-day assignment fighting any new fires that crop up, said Kurt Leavitt, the department's rural fire coordinator and one of the firefighters going to Elko.
The trucks came from various rural stations around the county, including Moapa, Searchlight and Mountain Springs. Fire crews and engines will continue to staff those stations, Leavitt said.
Crews from the Mount Charleston volunteer fire station area stayed behind because of the high fire danger on the mountain, he said.
Firefighters in the Elko area have been battling as many as a dozen wildfires, including the 60,000-acre Red House Complex and the 45,000-acre Hepworth Complex.
The county firefighters join 140 inmates from Southern Nevada prisons who have been fighting fires in the northern half of the state for about a week, said Mark Blankensop, fire management officer for the Nevada Division of Forestry's southern region.
Fire agencies in the lower half of the state have kept most of their equipment and personnel at home because of the extreme fire danger here, he said.
"We're just way too dry down here," said Blankensop, who recently retired from the U.S. Forest Service before joining the state Division of Forestry. "Thirty-two years of this and it just keeps getting worse and worse every year."
Southern Nevada has avoided a major wildfire so far this season, but with more thunderstorms expected in coming days, the threat of lightning-sparked fires looms.
"It could either beat the heck out of us or miss us completely," Blankensop said of the lightning.
Forecasters predicted thunderstorms will reach the Las Vegas area sometime Sunday with a 20 percent chance of rain. The thunderstorms were expected to linger into early next week.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
