Crews continue to fight Southern Nevada wildfires
Firefighters continued their air assault Wednesday on a 29-acre wildfire in a rugged area of the Nevada National Security Site while crews gained ground on containing the La Madre fire in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which operates the site formerly known as the Nevada Test Site, said crews were attempting to contain the Gritty Gulch fire on Rainier Mesa, about 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"It is in such a remote area, the only way we could fight it is from the air," said site spokesman Darwin Morgan.
Firefighters from the test site and the Bureau of Land Management responded to the blaze Tuesday in Area 19 of the 1,360-square-mile site, but there is no road access to the burned area. The BLM team conducted slurry air drops to surround the fire Wednesday. The blaze doesn't appear to be advancing, site officials said.
They said there is no contamination from past nuclear tests at the location.
An update from the operations center says the fire "most likely started from a lightning strike last week."
That's about the time two other lightning-caused fires broke out on the test site's west side and burned more than 6,000 acres before they were contained.
Crews at Red Rock, meanwhile, made significant progress Wednesday in containing the 45-acre La Madre wildland fire, three miles northwest of the Las Vegas Beltway and Summerlin Parkway.
The fire, reported Tuesday, was 60 percent contained at 8 a.m. Wednesday and a hot shot crew from Kern Valley, Calif., was joining the firefighting effort, according to a BLM news release.
"Firefighters are not expecting any problems (and) no estimate has been made as to when full containment will be met," according to the release, which also said that "winds were a real concern" on Tuesday.
The cause of the La Madre fire was unknown. No structures have been threatened, BLM officials said.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at
krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
