Governor's summit aims to lessen fire impacts in Nevada

RENO - Rising temperatures and desert winds are quickly sucking what little moisture is left from Nevada's arid landscape. They are rekindling memories of last year's nightmare fire season that saw 1.6 million acres go up in smoke.

With hot, dry conditions already taking hold, conditions are ripe for a repeat of last August. In one month much of the state's high-desert rangeland was devoured as thousands of lightning strikes ignited tinder-dry grass, brush and trees and flames were whipped by erratic winds into raging fire storms.

It's a scenario that state, federal and local fire officials hope to avoid this year. But lacking control over the whims of nature, they plan to at least be better prepared should fire storms again alight from the skies.

This week, Gov. Kenny Guinn will be host of a two-day conference exploring ways to reduce Nevada's vulnerability to wildland fires.

''There's been previous conferences on fires and what we can do to reduce damage and eliminate some of the threats,'' said Jim Walker, planning and mitigation supervisor at the Nevada Division of Emergency Management.

''The main thing we really want out of this is ways to implement the solutions - do what needs to be done instead of just writing up a plan and not following through on it,'' he said.

The Governor's Fire Summit, being held Wednesday and Thursday at the Peppermill Hotel-Casino, will include an overview of the 1999 fire season as well as panel discussions on the forces that feed Nevada wildfires.

''We're going to be looking at the fire season from every aspect,'' Walker said. ''How to prepare for it, respond to it, recover from it.''

Recovering from last year's fires is a monumental task that is still ongoing.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the largest land manager in the state, formed partnerships with other federal, state and local agencies as well as ranchers, mining companies and others to re-seed large swaths of rangeland and wildlife habitat.

So far more than 500,000 acres have been replanted statewide. An additional 30,000 acres are targeted for reseeding this fall.