Battle Mountain Fire Stations

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIORBUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
Nevada

Battle Mountain Fire Station 61

The Battle Mountain Fire Station is located at the Battle Mountain District Office in Battle Mountain, Nevada. There is one Fire Operations Supervisor (FOS), two Type 4 heavy fire engines, a Water Tender and a Type 2 Fire Dozer permanently stationed at this station. Both engines have 3 man crews with a captain, engineer and seasonal staffing them. There also is a district Fire Cache for support to incidents on the district. The District Fuels and Prevention Program are also based out of this station with heavy involvement in suppression during the summer months. Due to its proximity, Station 61 resources work frequently with local VFD resources and other federal and state resources around Northern Nevada. The Battle Mountain Station initial response area includes about 3 million acres of public lands within the District, plus portions of both the Winnemucca and Elko District Offices.

Eureka Fire Station 63

Eureka Fire Station is managed by the Battle Mountain District Office and is 140 miles southeast of district office in Battle Mountain. Eureka Station is located right on Highway 50 just west of the historic town of Eureka, NV. The Eureka station resources are supervised by a Fire Operations Supervisor (FOS) based out of Eureka. Eureka station houses two Type 4 Heavy Fire Engines with a crew of 4 on each and a Type 6 Engine with a crew of 3. Station 63 dispatching is coordinated through the Desert Basin Interagency Dispatch Center in Winnemucca, Nevada. The station also provides support for the Eureka SEAT Base, located at the Eureka Airport. They work closely with the Local Volunteer Fire Departments and Nevada Department of Forestry resources in Lander, Eureka, and Nye Counties. The Eureka fire response area is extremely large and contains a variety of fuel types. Wildland fire crews could find themselves working in the valleys with grass/shrub lands or over-looking those valleys atop the vertical mountains with a Pinyon Pine/Juniper woodland forest.

Red Hills Pescribed Fire

Hazard Fuels reduction project - Red Hills Area

Battle Mountain Air Attack Base

The Battle Mountain Air Attack Base (BAM) is a full-service contract base which provides aerial fire-fighting support to hundreds of wildland fires throughout Nevada and the Great Basin. The types of aircraft typically in operation at the base during the fire season range from large heavy airtankers and mid-sized aircraft used for smokejumper operations to smaller airplanes used as lead planes and air attack platforms, as well as helicopters. A retardant contractor at the base supplies the Bureau of Land Management with the fire retardant product that is loaded into the airtankers. The contractor also maintains a small staff that is responsible for the actual delivery of the retardant into the airplane. The Bureau of Land Management manages and operates the base during the wildland fire season which typically runs from June through October. The BLM oversees the retardant contract, various aircraft contracts and ensures that the base is fully staffed and operating at an optimal level of safety and efficiency. Normal BLM staffing at the base includes a Base Manager, an Assistant Manager, a Base Radio Operator/Aircraft Timekeeper, and a Ramp Manager. However, depending on the amount of fire activity, as many as 50 to 70 personnel pertinent to base operations, retardant contractors, pilots and other aircrews and smokejumpers may be stationed at the base.

The heavy airtankers, which possess a tanking system that holds from 2,000-3,000 gallons of mixed retardant, are the aircraft that actually deliver fire retardant to be dropped on the wildland fire.

Single Engine Air Tankers, commonly known as SEATs, are smaller, crop-duster-type aircraft. While carrying much smaller loads (400 – 800 gallons) of retardant or fire-suppressant foam, they are able to work out of small bases at rural airstrips located close to the fires. With much shorter turn-around times, they are very effective at keeping fires small during initial-attack.

Numerous other types of aircraft are typically stationed at and operate from the Battle Mountain Air Attack Base. As stated above, these airplanes also provide aerial firefighting support. Such uses for these aircraft include: smokejumper operations in which an 8-man load of smokejumpers are deployed from the aircraft using parachutes to work as firefighters on the ground at the actual scene of the fire. Other aircraft are used for such missions as leading airtankers to their intended drop zone at the scene of the fire, air attack platforms which provide aerial supervision and coordination over the fire, aerial reconnaissance aircraft, and helicopters which can provide water drops using large buckets, perform crew shuttles and other operations to support the firefighting operation.

The fire retardant chemical that is used here at BAM is a liquid Concentrate designed to be diluted with water and used as an aerial fire retardant for wildfires. The major ingredient is ammonium polyphosphate, a commonly used agricultural fertilizer. It also contains minor amounts of a clay thickener, a corrosion inhibitor and colorant. The retardant is mixed at a 5:1 ratio (five parts water to one part liquid concentrate) prior to being loaded onto an airtanker.

Currently, BAM has a storage capacity for 40,000 gallons of liquid concentrate retardant and 30,000 gallons of water. The aforementioned is stored in 10,000-gallon tanks. There is also a 6,000-gallon storage tank available for off-load purposes. A mass-flow meter manufactured by Micro-Motion, Inc. is used to measure weight and gallons of mixed retardant before it is delivered into the airtanker.

The following information provides the total number of mixed retardant gallons that have been loaded onto heavy airtankers and SEATs at the Battle Mountain Air Attack Base over the course of the past 23 fire seasons.

Year / Total Gallons Year / Total Gallons

1984 = 150,000 gallons 1996 = 1,027,433 gallons

1985 = 250,000 gallons 1997 = 126,100 gallons

1986 = 300,000 gallons 1998 = 250,000 gallons

1987 = 102,800 gallons 1999 = 1,797,880 gallons

1988 = 168,350 gallons 2000 = 1,783,020 gallons

1989 = 164,700 gallons 2001 = 1,322,413 gallons

1990 = 24,000 gallons 2002 = 143,508 gallons

1991 = 75,000 gallons 2003 = 110,634 gallons

1992 = 208,000 gallons 2004 = 83,116 gallons

1993 = 91,659 gallons 2005 = 307,947 gallons

1994 = 539,404 gallons 2006 = 1,080,673 gallons

1995 = 344,891 gallons 2007 = 421,198 gallons