Firefighters at the Nevada National Security Site have completely contained the Cherrywood Fire that started burning on May 17 and spread over 26,410 acres of the former test site, the site said Monday.
The fire crossed into a contaminated area less than a week after it started burning, but in a statement Monday, the Honeywell-led site prime contractor, Mission Support and Test Services, said there had been “no risk to health and human safety, and no offsite risk to the public.”
Wildfires are common in the American west and nuclear weapons sites are used to dealing with them. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Nevada National Security Site all deal with them during the summer months. The Cerro Grande wildfire that threatened Los Alamos in 2000 is perhaps the best known of these.
Just over a year ago, the Nevada National Security Site, aided by other federal first responders, put out another wild fire.
