Nev. FD uses wildfire reduction grant to continue protection of up to 3,000 acres

Elko County Fire Protection District/Facebook

By Lydia Snow
Elko Daily Free Press

ELKO, Nev. — The Elko County Fire Protection District will receive community assistance project funding for fire prevention this year as part of a $1.79 million wildfire-reduction grant from the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM funded the first year of a fire project in 2023, bringing 500 acres of fuels treatment to Elko County that also involved hosting community activities and workshops and strengthening partnerships with local firefighters.

Last year, the Elko fire district treated around 500 acres in the Tenmile Creek /South Fork area, Elko Fire Chief Matt Petersen said.

“But we really protected about 3,000 by putting in green strips, giving us an area of opportunity to stop or slow a fire when it hits those green strips. But the idea is, we’re mowing roadsides or treating big, broad areas — so, if a fire hits it, we can stop it there or slow it down so it doesn’t get into another neighborhood.”


He said for the next year, the department will continue to maintain the South Fork/Tenmile Creek area, while also moving into the Moor summit area near Wells, where firefighters will “target about 200 acres of direct treatments, which will protect about 1,500 to 2,000 acres.”

“It’s going to be a little bit slower because it’s heavier fuels and desert. But it’s a very rural community and there’s not a lot of fire response. So, if we can lessen the impacts on the fire there, then by the time the responders get there, we’ll have hopefully lower fire behavior so we can get in there,” Petersen explained.
The BLM’s fire treatment strategies include artificial intelligence-powered smoke detector cameras.

“We have access to those cameras, and some of them are put in regular order in the state of Nevada,” Petersen said. “We get alerts from them. They either get reported to us or directly to dispatch centers.”

He said the National Weather Service has a program “where they call us and say, ‘Hey, we have a heat signature up here. We believe you guys have a fire.’ And they report fires to us that way. When we’re covering 17,000 square miles, any way for people to report fires to us is a good way, because it can take us six hours to get there,” he said.

“The community received it well,” Petersen said of the 2023 project. “Once we started communicating with the homeowners or property owners, they started seeing the benefits.

“One neighborhood was hesitant they would see property treatments that happened to their neighbors. And they were like, ‘Hey, we see what’s going on. We would like to have part of that,’” he said.

“One of the major benefits is, obviously, people don’t lose their properties — or that’s the hope. Another side benefit is, they can take pictures and anything else that we’re doing and submit it to their insurance companies, so the insurance company can see that there are ongoing treatments to reduce wildland fire risk and protect people’s properties” and keep their insurance policies from cancellation, he said.

“Anything that a property owner can do to say, ‘Hey, we’re trying to get ahead of this and treat our properties,’ it’s helpful to not just us in the county but the homeowners.”

Petersen said state and federal funding to continue treatments is crucial.

“So that we can maintain our staff and keep treating these communities, is the number one thing that we need to continue — because that funds the people, that funds the equipment, the supplies and time to be able to complete these projects,” Petersen said.

“It’s a pretty cool program. It’s awesome to see the aggressiveness of saying, ‘Hey, wildfire is a problem. Here’s some money. Let’s fix the problem.’ And that’s been something that the federal government and the state hasn’t had the ability to do in recent years, so this has helped out a ton.”

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