Local wildland fire activity winds down

Repair work continued this week on bulldozer lines and other excavated areas to prevent erosion on the Draw Fire, about 60 miles east of Fallon near Cold Springs.

According to the Great Basin Team 3 Type 2 Incident Management Team (IMT), fire resources were drawn down, equipment, materials and trash were back hauled out of the fire area and over half the fire resources were reassigned to other wildfires in the region.

Two IA (Initial Attack) task forces were staged strategically along U.S. Highway 50 ready to respond to any new wildfire starts as weather fronts passed through the area. Fortunately, neither was required.

The fire is 100 percent contained.

Bravo 17 Fire (U.S. Navy training range): Friday evening’s black lining operations along a 6-mile stretch of Highway 50 starting at the Earthquake Fault Road west to the salt flats was completed by 8 p.m. Fuels along the black line are too sparse and widely spread which should limit fire spread towards the highway.

As the fire burned down off of the mountain Saturday onto the flats, it simply sputtered out for lack of enough fuel to sustain it without strong winds, reports the IMT. Late Friday afternoon and continued on through Saturday hand crews in combination with helicopter bucket drops of water worked to defend and protect a wildlife habitat area at the south end of Slate Mountain. The radio towers/repeaters on top of Fairview Peak were also successfully defended and remain both intact and fully functional with only a short disruption in communications throughout the fire.

Crews will patrol and monitor existing containment lines on the Bravo 17 Fire. The IMT will hand off responsibility for the Bravo 17 Fire jointly to the Bureau of Land Management and Naval Air Station Fallon. The Federal Fire Department at the air station will provide its brush engine to take over patrolling the Bravo 17 fire boundaries.