Responders at the Nevada National Security Site have completely contained the wildfires that broke out there last week in the site’s western region at Area 16, Area 29 and Area 30, the site said this week.
The total estimated burn area was about 275 acres, according to a Tuesday press release from site management and operations contractor, the Honeywell-led Mission Support and Test Services. That’s less than one one-hundreth of a percent of the site’s total area. The Nevada National Security Site (NNSA) is a little larger than Rhode Island.
NNSS and the Bureau of Land Management quickly got the fire in Area 30 under control and had, by July 2, mostly contained the fires in Area 16 and Area 29, Someone first spotted smoke from the fires on June 29, NNSS said.
Area 16 hosted six nuclear tests while area 30 hosted one. There were no tests at area 29, according to DOE records. Most of the scorched acreage from the recent fires was in area 16, NNSS said last week.
Last week’s wildfires followed by a few weeks the much larger Cherrywood fire that burned for about a month at the test site, crossing over some 35,000 acres. The Cherrywood fire burned over contaminated areas but did not ultimately pose any risk to the public outside the site, NNSS said. The site said the recent fires in Area 16, Area 29 and Area 30 posed no outside risk, either.
