On the afternoon of July 5, a fire broke out in a rugged and remote area 21 miles southwest of Hawthorne, near the Nevada-California line and Aurora-Bodie volcanic field. Named the Lucky Boy Fire, it burned 157 acres over the next few days.
When the fire originally broke out, the Mineral County Fire Department sent out a brush crew, but they were mainly on standby for medical assistance. By July 6, the US Forest Service had four helicopters, four hand crews (from Nevada Division of Forestry, Tahoe Douglas Fire, and North Lake Tahoe Fire) as well as two fire engines fighting the blaze.
The call for the fire came in at around 3pm, but firefighters couldn’t get to the area of the blaze until a bit after 5pm because many of the roads were washed out and/or damaged from last winter’s heavy storms. It was 84 degrees Fahrenheit at 22 percent Relative Humidity when the Lucky Boy Fire started, fueled by dead grass and brush. Winds were presumed to be gusting at around 25mph judging from how the smoke column was bent over sideways but fortunately the winds died down to 3-5mph by the time fire crews arrived.
“It’s 75 percent contained [as of July 11]; crews finished mopping up the fire and the Bridgeport crew is monitoring it,” said Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest Public Affairs Officer Erica Hupp. She believes it will be fully contained by the weekend.
“It’s in a lava crater area that’s rugged and hard to get into,” she added. “It’s remote and rocky.” Hupp does not have any indication of how the fire started, however, and it is currently under investigation.
“I think we can rule out lightning, and it is near a mine, but it could be a million things,” said Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest Fire Information Officer Rich Martinez. He did say that the hot and windy weather conditions at the time the fire started did play a significant role in how it spread.
“Fortunately, we caught it that night when the wind died down and now it’s all good,” Martinez added.
