LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Four wildfires in the Wetlands on the eastern edge of the Vegas Valley in less than three months.
The most recent started Tuesday afternoon and was just fully extinguished Thursday evening.
Another fire happened just a couple of weeks ago on June 9th, another in early April, and another on March 31st. This week’s brush fire was the biggest of the four burning about 110 acres.
Given there have been so many fires, neighbors are concerned another could break out especially with the firework sales next week for Fourth of July.
“You had some ash that fell on your house and property?,” FOX5’s Kim Passoth asked Karla Mitchell who has lived across from the Wetlands for 14 years.
“It was all over. I had kept my garage up because sometimes when I come home, I just leave it up to like, clean up and do other things. And it was all in the garage. I just was sweeping it up today,” Mitchell recounted. Mitchell loves being able to walk over to the park with her kids but now the seemingly constant fires scare her.
“It seems like they’re getting bigger and they’re coming back-to-back… I’m actually thinking about getting a fireproof safe and things for like my goods and kind of a quick bag to leave out if we needed to go,” Mitchell revealed.
“We do send engines into the neighborhoods that are adjacent that are there specifically to protect those homes from embers,” explained Brian O’Neal, Deputy Fire Chief and Emergency Manager of the Clark County Fire Department.
Fires in the Wetlands are a challenge for firefighters because the thick brush not only makes many areas hard to get to, it also fuels the flames.
“It’s never been that close. It’s usually been further back also, but I know the transient people are kind of closer… I don’t know if it’s necessarily that their cooking and doing things, but I did see one with a pot and I was kind of surprised how he was cooking something with the pot,” shared Mitchell.
Throughout the Wetlands, there are flood control channels that run directly from the city, like one at Duck Creek, right next to Sam Boyd Stadium. It is one area where unhoused individuals live.
“We do recognize that there is a homeless population in the area. We work with a number of different partners to help provide services to those individuals and help move them into safe locations,” O’Neal reported.
O’Neal also shared right now we are in the midst of fire season and more fires are possible. O’Neal said embers from these large fires can be carried significant distances and threaten nearby homes, and so CCFD wants to make sure that homeowners are taking steps to proactively protect their homes.
The best way to do that: clear dead vegetation and other combustibles from directly around your home and dead leaves from your roof.
While the cause of this week’s fire has not yet been determined, two of the last three were human caused. The cause of the third was undetermined.
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