HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Fiery debris pours like slag from the roof of this trailer in a mobile home park at Rancho View Drive and Money Street as Pahrump firefighters try to end the Sunday blaze. Advertisement

Dual lightning strikes, five seconds apart, caused a 315-acre wildfire to rage through brush in the lower elevations of the Spring Mountains on public lands on the north end of the Pahrump Valley Monday night.

An orange glow along a swath of hillside could be seen 10 miles away in Pahrump as the fire consumed the desert brush on the mountain's flank south of Johnnie Springs.

The U.S. Forest Service, Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, sent three engines to the blaze, which was termed the Crystal Fire. By Tuesday the fire was mostly out, helped by the wet and cooler overnight weather.

At mid-afternoon a small crew remained to put out hotspots.

Pahrump Valley Fire-Rescue Service also sent an engine and a brush truck, but the fire was too high up on the mountain for the equipment to be of any use.

Lightning caused a new fire Tuesday on Forest Service land in Lovell Canyon, four to five miles south of Torino Ranch.

"There were strikes all across the mountains north from Las Vegas," said Pahrump Fire Chief Scott Lewis. "We had a number of lightning strikes in the Pahrump Valley."

Lewis said the lightning damage amounted to small brush fires that were quickly extinguished, but a number of electric power line poles were toppled by overnight winds, he said.

At approximately 6:30 p.m. Monday firefighters responded to a house fire at 1301 W. Bonner in which the laundry room had caught fire. The fire, which was extinguished before damaging the rest of the house, is still under investigation.

At 1:30 p.m. last Sunday an apartment fire broke out at the Rancho View complex on Money Street. When firefighters arrived, one apartment was engulfed, the fire venting through the roof; two other adjacent apartments were exposed to the fire's spread, but it was put out before serious damage had occurred. It, too, remains under investigation.