State officials: wet winters have potential for destructive fire season

Following two wet winters in Northern Nevada, the fuels load in lower elevations could ignite as summer heat dries it out, a group of local, state and federal officials warned Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo during a wildfire briefing in the Capitol on Friday.

“The prediction this year,” said Nevada State Forester and Firewarden Kacey KC, “lower elevation areas with lying grass and fuels are probably of most concern, so are shrub areas. Higher elevation forested areas did get a big snowpack, so they’re probably going to be delayed when the fires start this year.”

KC said the 2023 fire season in the state was basically nonexistent with only 1,305 acres burned. That compares to an average of about 450,000 acres burned per year. KC provided data showing drought years with lower burn totals and wet cycles with higher burn totals. For instance, in the wet cycle of 2017 and 2018, about 2.4 million acres in Nevada burned.

Brock Uhlig of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management shared predictive maps showing wildfire potential in Northern Nevada as normal for May and June but above normal later in the summer.

“That (higher potential) is going to be starting really in June in Southern Nevada and then transitioning into Northern Nevada in July and August,” he said.

“We’re not trying freak anybody out,” KC added. “We’re just showing that these years are our biggest years, so we’re preparing for what I would hope to be an anomaly of 1,300 acres again, but I just don’t think it’s going to be possible. We just drove to Elko. There is a lot of grass greening up out there.”

The good news is firefighters are prepared. Rich Harvey, fire chief of Central Lyon County Fire Protection District and a representative of the Nevada Fire Chiefs Association, pointed to 52 “firewise” community chapters and hundreds of wildfire risk assessments and defensible space inspections within the state.

Reading a statement signed by Nevada fire chiefs, Harvey said, “This year, we will aggressively attack all fires within or threatening our jurisdictions.”

Nevada firefighters share resources. For example, there are 193 fire engines between agencies in the state, with 112 from local agencies, Harvey said. Local jurisdictions count on the larger agencies for aircraft and other equipment.

“There are things that we don’t have,” he said. “And that’s where these partnerships with the state and the feds — BLM, Forest Service — come in really handy, just to provide Nevada firefighters with all the tools in the toolbox in order to be successful and get out there to do the job.”

Also present at the briefing were representatives from the Nevada National Guard and the Nevada Division of Emergency Management. Lombardo hoped all organizations would work well together, warning bureaucracy could cause delays. He wanted the state’s response to wildland fire to be “as seamless as possible.”

For information about wildfire prevention and preparedness, visit https://www.livingwithfire.org/.