The Healthy Forests Initiative was announced by the White House in 2002 to implement the core components of the National Fire Plan Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the Environment 10-year Comprehensive Strategy. The Plan calls for more active forest and rangeland management to reduce the threat of wildland fire in the wildland-urban interface, the area where homes and wildlands meet.

This report was prepared specifically for the communities within Nye County identified in the 2001 Federal Register list of communities at risk within the vicinity of federal lands that are most vulnerable to the threat of wildfire. The communities assessed in Nye County are listed in Table 1-1.

The Nevada Fire Safe council contracted with Resource Concepts, Inc. (RCI) to assemble a project team of experts in the fields of fire behavior and suppression, natural resource ecology, and geographic information systems (GIS) to complete the assessment for each Nye County community listed in the Federal Register. The RCI Project Team spent several days inventorying conditions in Nye County and completing the verification portions of the risk/hazard assessment.

This report describes in detail the data and information collected, analyzed, and considered during the assessment of each community. The general results are summarized in Table 1-1. Five primary factors that affect potential fire hazard were assessed to arrive at the community hazard assessment score: community design, defensible space, construction materials, availability and capability of fire suppression resources, and physical conditions such as the vegetative fuel load and topography. Information on fire suppression capabilities and responsibilities for Nye County communities was obtained from local Fire Chiefs, local Fire Management Officers, and Nye County dispatch centers in Tonopah, Beatty, and Pahrump. The RCI Project Team Fire Specialist assigned an ignition risk rating for each community of low, moderate, or high. The rating was based upon historical ignition patterns, interviews with local fire personnel and other agency fire management officers, field visits to each community, and the professional judgments of the RCI Project Team Fire Specialist based on experience with wildland fire ignitions in central and southern Nevada.

Table 1-1. Community Risk and Hazard Assessment Results

Community	Interface Classification	Interface Fuel Hazard Condition	Ignition Risk Rating	Community Hazard Rating
Amargosa Valley	Intermix	Low	Low	Moderate
Beatty	Intermix	Low	Low	Moderate
Belmont	Intermix	High to Extreme	High	High
Carvers	Intermix	Low to High	High	Moderate
Gabbs	Classic Interface, Intermix	Low to Moderate	Low	Moderate
Hadley (Round Mountain)	Classic Interface	Low	Low	Low
Ione	Intermix	Moderate to Extreme	High	Extreme
Manhattan	Intermix	High to Extreme	High	Extreme
Pahrump	Intermix	Low	Moderate	Low
Tonopah	Classic Interface	Low to Moderate	Low	Low

Existing Situation

Nye County spans a broad range of elevations from the Mohave Desert areas in the south to the mountain ranges in the north. The communities in the southern part of the county generally have sparse fuels, low ignition risks, and low hazard ratings. Higher elevation communities in the northern part of the county have dense fuels, high ignition risks, and high to extreme hazard ratings.

Recommendations

A variety of measures are recommended for each community to reduce ignition risks, mitigate fire hazards, and promote fire safe communities. Recommendations typically include physical removal or reduction of flammable vegetation, increased community awareness of fire risks and strategies to reduce those risks, and coordination among fire suppression agencies to optimize efforts and resources.

Recommendations for creating defensible space were also applied uniformly in each community for landowners who have not yet reduced fuels on their private property. Defensible space is the homeowner’s responsibility and is an essential first line of defense for saving lives and property during a catastrophic wildland fire.

Proper equipment and training are a common recommendation to each community. With the exception of Ione, each community in Nye County has a fire department. All of the departments rely on volunteers and are in need of additional wildfire personal protective equipment, tools, and wildfire training for all firefighters.

Recommendations were also formulated to mitigate the hazardous conditions for each problem area that was identified. The most hazardous areas are those within the heavy pinyon-juniper fuel types. Recommendations needed to reduce vegetative fuel load in the interface areas were directed to the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, and individual property owners. Implementation of the prescribed treatments will also reduce competition among the residual trees for sunlight and water, thus improving forest health. The reestablishment of native grasses in order to combat the invasion of cheatgrass, a highly flashy fuel, will also mitigate the fire hazard in some areas.

Excessive amounts of biomass (vegetative fuel) generated from fuel reduction treatments in the Nye County communities listed below will need to be chipped, burned, or removed from the treated areas to achieve the required fuel load reduction.

Belmont, Ione, and Manhattan have the highest hazard ratings in Nye County. Fuel reduction projects on land managed by the BLM and the US Forest Service surrounding each community are recommended. These communities also need improved radio communications in the event that additional resources need to be brought into the area.

Specific Recommendations for Fuel Reduction Treatments

Belmont:

• Implement a shaded fuelbreak around the community to provide a minimum of 500 feet of protection to structures from the surrounding wildland fuels. This distance increases up to 1,500 feet in areas where the fuel hazard is extreme. The fuelbreak should be seeded with perennial grasses and treated with an acceptable pre-emergent herbicide to prevent annuals from germinating in the first year.
• Within the shaded fuelbreak, trees should be thinned to a spacing equivalent to one and one-half (1-1/2) times the height of the taller trees from crown to crown. Shrubs should be thinned to a spacing of two times their height and eliminated completely within ten feet of the tree crowns that remain.
• Fuel reduction on the private lands in the community should include thinning shrubs to a spacing of two times their height. Trees should be thinned to a spacing equivalent to one and one-half (1-1/2) times the height of the taller trees from crown to crown. Additional guidelines for defensible space are included in Appendix E.

Ione:

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) carried out a site assessment for the Ione community in May 2003, and the following treatment alternatives are proposed in the site assessment. Some treatments cross administrative boundaries between the BLM and the USFS. Figure 11-4 reproduces the proposed treatment areas as presented in the BLM site assessment.

• Continue implementation of the planned mowing, greenstrip, and shaded fuelbreak treatments on the BLM and USFS lands in the vicinity of Ione. The total planned treatment area is 476 acres.

Manhattan:

The Manhattan community was assessed by the Bureau of Land Management in October 2002 and an environmental assessment completed in November 2003. The assessment recommended fuel reductions on 487 acres of BLM and USFS lands (D. Walker, pers. comm. 2 Dec 2004). Implementation of this interagency effort was initiated during the summer of 2004.

Close and continued coordination between citizens, local fire departments, Nye County, the US Forest Service Austin and Tonopah Ranger Districts, and the Bureau of Land Management Battle Mountain Field Office is crucial for the implementation of fuel reduction projects and fire safety efforts in Nye County. To be most effective, fire safe practices need to be implemented on a community-wide basis. Proactive efforts to effectively reduce the risk of wildfire ignitions near communities, implementing defensible space and fuel reduction projects, general community clean-up programs, and public education programs will help to mitigate the hazards inherent in wildland interface areas.