MARK WAITE / PVT Firefighters from Mountain Springs try on their gear in front of a pair of fire engines at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management fire station on Chromium Boulevard, a mile east of the intersection of Manse Road and Highway 160. A day later firefighters donned their turnout clothes for real as a fire charred part of Mt. Potosi. Advertisement

While federal fire management officials prepared for a press conference on the 2008 wildland fire season Tuesday, an announcement came over the radio warning of red flag conditions, due to the high winds and low humidity in the weather forecast.

Within 24 hours a wild fire had broken out near Mountain Springs pass and caused traffic to be halted along Highway 160. (See related story.)

The conditions are never good for preventing wild fires in Southern Nevada in the summer, said Greg Malfil, U.S. Bureau of Land Management fire prevention officer.

"The public's not stupid. You can't go every year, like chicken little, 'It's going to be a horrible fire season.' But unfortunately this area in southern Nevada, we're probably going to be in that situation every year because what makes for a bad fire season?

"Well, fuels and hot, dry, windy weather. Well, in Southern Nevada it's always hot, it's always dry, it's always windy in summer. So that possibility is always there."

When it's a really wet spring, desert grasses and wild flowers grow at lower elevations, creating more of a fire danger in the desert, Malfil said. When there's a drought, the fire season isn't so bad at lower elevations but big trees dry out at higher elevations in the forest, he said.

A unused sign leaning against the wall at the BLM fire station garage, next to a shiny fire truck ready for action, stated "moderate fire danger."

In reality, the category Tuesday was already at "very high," BLM Engine Capt. Joe Majewski said. That's the second worst condition, only "extreme" is a more significant danger.

Malfil said cooler temperatures and higher humidity later this week could reduce that to simply a high fire danger, as the rating system for the signs posted in all national forests is based on humidity, temperature and moisture levels of the vegetation.

The BLM, National Park Service, Nevada Division of Forestry and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service imposed fire restrictions effective May 16 due to the high potential for wildland fires. High temperatures and dry vegetation lead to the designation.

The fire restrictions prohibit campfires on public lands outside of developed recreation sites, except for a portable stove; smoking, except in an enclosed vehicle; welding, firing off explosives or fireworks.

Ray Johnson, U.S. Forest Service fire prevention officer, stressed the restrictions banning charcoal fires as well as wood fires, since charcoal is often tossed on grass afterwards.

"We do encourage people to bring propane for grill stoves if they are camping. That's fine because they can turn those off," Johnson said.

Various planning agencies, including the BLM, Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs and Pahrump Fire and Rescue Service, are planning a fuels reduction program, to reduce the threat of wildland fires. But Malfil notes that's a long-term, 10-year plan still in the early planning phases.

Dry lightning causes many fires, but untended campfires are the number one cause of human-ignited fires, Malfil said.

In the town of Pahrump, trash-burning, children playing with matches or fireworks can also cause fires in the dry summer months.

Pahrump residents need to be aware of the concept of providing defensible space around their homes, Nye County Emergency Services Workplace Safety and Training Officer Jim Medici said. That isn't just good advice for people who live in forests in places like Lake Tahoe.

"Three feet is a good rule of thumb for the defensible space issue, and people should be concerned in this valley. A lot of people live in a lot of salt cedars, tamarisk trees and mesquite groves. People are moving right in there and they let trees grow right up against their houses, Medici said.

He said trees that are only a few feet high can generate flames three times that height.

"A lot of times people think about their house burning down, they think about the fire starting inside the house. You can burn your house down if you have a bunch of brush and trees outside of your house," Malfil said.

Medici said fire crews survey neighborhoods and make a decision not to try to save homes with a lot of brush growing around them.

Outside Pahrump, it's been eight years since a major fire hit the west side of the Spring Mountains. During the Buck Springs Fire near Wheeler Pass in the summer of 2000, firefighters were camped out in Petrack Park and the flames were visible at night from Pahrump.

Firefighters battled the Last Chance Fire in 2002, which was also the year of the Trout fire.

Fire management officials said the situation this summer looks better than it did in 2005, when an unusually wet winter led to a buildup of vegetation.

"On the greenness map, Southern Nevada looked like the central valley of California; this big, green blotch that was all going to dry out and be fuel in the next couple months," Malfil said of the 2005 season.

BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said there were 169 fires that torched 169,000 acres in the summer of 2005 in the Las Vegas district, which includes areas of Nevada south of the Big Dune in Amargosa Valley.

Last summer was relatively mild, with 98 fires consuming 1,133 acres, she said.

Medici said 20 volunteer firefighters from Amargosa Valley, Beatty and Crystal began a Firefighter 101 class certified by the National Firefighters Protection Association that began in February and ends in October.

Nye County Emergency Services hopes to bring all the volunteer departments into NFPA standards with wildland fire training, he said.