Huge fire outbreak dwindles to mop-up after a vicious week

RENO, Nev. - One week after lightning sparked Nevada's worst outbreak of wildland fires in decades, crews headed home today from some 100 blackened scars that cover more square miles than the state of Rhode Island.

"We don't have any active fire going right now," Elko Interagency Fire dispatch center spokesman Mike Cassidy said.

"For the first time in a week, there's not a lot of smoke in the air. In fact, there's no smoke in the air."

The Sadler complex 45 miles south of Elko was the last major unchecked fire in the state.

Even though it had stopped growing and was not showing any smoke, Cassidy said it would not be officially contained until later today.

"We want to make sure we don't have any pockets of heat," he said. Those could flare up again after they dry out.

"We got some rain yesterday on all the fires we had going. That slows down the spread," Cassidy said Wednesday.

The Sadler Complex, the second largest of the fires that straddled Interstate 80 through the northern part of the state, blackened 224,823 acres of grass, scrub and small trees, Cassidy said.

The largest of the fires triggered by more than 10,000 lightning strikes last week, the 20-blaze Dun Glenn Complex between Winnemucca and Lovelock, was contained late Tuesday at 361,656 acres.

So far this year, fires have blackened 1.32 million acres in Nevada, or just under 2,100 square miles - nearly half the nation's 1999 total.

"I've been here for four decades and I've never seen anything like this," Bureau of Land Management spokesman Bob Stewart said last weekend as the flames raged at their worst.

There were 4,100 firefighters on the lines at the height of the fires. They're being released as the burn areas are reduced to caretaker status.

Only minor injuries were reported and structural damage was held to two vacant mobile homes and two outbuildings.

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