Fire season is drawing ever closer, and the Nevada Division of Forestry is preparing for with hands-on training exercises.
Friday morning, NDF held wildfire training with 47 rookie firefighters in Gardnerville to get them ready for the real thing. This training includes cutting firelines, coordinating with helicopters and fire mitigation, which will help if a fire breaks out in this area.
“The purpose for this is our rookie academy for this year; all our new recruits are out here. We’ve got 33 in a wildland fire academy and 14 in an engine academy,” said Kacey KC, state forester and firewarden with the NDF. “The purpose is to train them in class and in the field on how a wildfire is going to occur in this area. So what you’re seeing today is an actual simulation of a fire.”
The training consists of 12- to 16-hour days, with a mix of classroom learning and hands-on training, which puts their skills to the test. The training for wildland firefighters consists of 40 hours as well as an eight-hour refresher course for those firefighters who have already done this kind of work.
“This is critically important training, our firefighters are always trained to the national standard, it’s critically important that they know what to do when they get out there and are under pressure,” said KC. “This is not just NDF out here today. We have partner agencies. It’s an interagency effort and that’s how it would be on a fire. They need to know how to work together and how to make sure that we’re communicating properly.”
According to KC, the expected fire season this year will be average, which means about 600 fires burning an approximate total of 500,000 acres. With the huge snowpack from this winter, higher elevation fires aren’t expected as much as lower elevation ones. 
The coordinated effort of this training focused a lot of energy on water supply and getting hoses pumping water up the mountain and making sure it was a steady flow and pressure. The helicopter water drops are incredibly important to practice since they are constantly updated over the radio between the pilot and the ground crew.
What every firefighter out there stated was that no fire season can be predicted, even after some of the harshest winters, the fire season was terribly destructive. The majority of fires in any given season are human caused, at about 60%, where the remaining 40% is naturally occurring.
After more intense winters, there tends to be more dry lightning in the area so residents are encouraged to continue to be cautious and respect any red flag warnings this year. One key issue fire officials have stated is that during red flag warnings, is to delay any work or activity that has any chance of causing sparks, be it construction, shooting or even disposing of cigarettes.
The last few fire seasons have been a bit of a mix with the Sierra Nevada-Cascade fire season of 2022 being relatively quiet compared to 2020 and 2021. In those fire seasons, 1.1 million and 1.6 million acres were burned, respectively.
