Crews battle Cold Springs fire

RENO - Fire crews from the Carson City area were among those dispatched Saturday to quench a brush fire north of Reno that consumed about 200 acres before being contained.

Bureau of Land Management and Nevada Division of Forestry firefighters joined crews from the Truckee Meadows Fire District battling the blaze along Cold Springs Drive, in the hills about a mile east of Highway 395 just north of Reno.

Among the NDF firefighters were about 50 inmates from the Stewart Honor Camp, firefighters at the scene said.

Besides brush engines and hand crews working on the brush-covered terrain, two C-130 air tankers dropped retardant and two helicopters dropped water on the fire.

"No homes were ever seriously threatened," TMFD battalion chief Brent Swearingen said Saturday evening. "That area had previously burned in 1980 or '81, so it was mainly light brush and rabbit brush."

By 7 p.m., the fire had been contained and TMFD and BLM crews were mopping up, Swearingen said. He said the fire had been on BLM-managed land and the first call about it had come in just before noon Saturday.

Because there had been no lightning in the area, the fire most likely was man-caused, he said, but no further determination of how it started had been made.

The fire is among many that have ravaged Nevada this season.

This year's fire season is being called the worst in the West in 50 years. So far in Nevada, fires have burned hundreds of thousands of acres - slightly more than 10 percent of the national total.