Virgin Creek Fire
The Virgin Creek Fire burned 1,450 acres in Humboldt County, Nevada, in 1999. It was discovered on August 19, 1999, and contained on August 19, 1999. The cause was recorded as natural. Incident teams reported 1 structure destroyed.
- Size
- 1,450 acres
- Discovered
- August 19, 1999
- Contained
- August 19, 1999
- Cause
- Natural
- Structures destroyed
- 1
Map
The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 1,548 acres. Point of origin as reported, 41.861, -118.622.
The record
- Reported final size
- 1,450 acres
- Burned area mapped by MTBS
- 1,548 acres
- Area inside the final perimeter
- 1,481 acres
- Discovered
- August 19, 1999, 12:24 a.m. local time
- Contained
- August 19, 1999, 1:50 p.m. local time
- Cause
- Natural
- State
- Nevada
- County
- Humboldt County
- Land ownership at origin
- Bureau of Land Management
- Reporting unit
- Winnemucca District Office
- Agency
- Bureau of Land Management
- Unit
- NVWID
- Incident type
- Wildfire
- MTBS fire identifier
- NV4183111859919990819
- MTBS assessment
- Initial
- Fire occurrence record
- W-2717
The three sizes are three measurements: the size the agency reported when the fire was out, the burned area MTBS drew from satellite imagery before and after, and the GIS area inside the final perimeter, unburned islands included. They rarely agree exactly.
From the incident teams’ reports
The status summaries (ICS-209 forms) the incident teams filed: 1. These are the teams’ own estimates, written while the incident was running, and personnel is totaled from the resources each report lists. A fact the reports leave blank is not shown, and a zero on the form is treated as blank.
- Structures destroyed
- 1
- Most structures threatened at once
- 1
- Most personnel assigned
- 150 on August 19, 1999
- Cause on the reports
- Lightning or other natural
Other large fires in Nevada in 199912
| Fire | Acres | Start | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dun Glenn Complex (Poker Brown) Fire | 231,389 | Aug 4, 1999 | Natural |
| Sadler Complex | 199,288 | Aug 5, 1999 | Natural |
| New Pass Complex (New Pass-Antelope) Fire | 139,755 | Aug 4, 1999 | Natural |
| Eureka Complex (Trail Canyon) Fire | 95,793 | Aug 5, 1999 | Natural |
| Sombrero Fire | 80,448 | Aug 4, 1999 | Natural |
| Clover Fire | 73,077 | Jul 8, 1999 | Human |
| Jungo Complex | 72,179 | Aug 4, 1999 | Natural |
| Frenchie Fire | 54,677 | Aug 4, 1999 | Natural |
| Rose Fire | 48,479 | Aug 6, 1999 | Natural |
| New Pass Fire | 47,435 | ||
| Fish Complex (Fish Springs) Fire | 47,133 | Aug 23, 1999 | Natural |
| Badger Fire | 40,000 | Aug 24, 1999 | Natural |
Nearby
Sources
Perimeters from the National Interagency Fire Center’s Interagency Fire Perimeter History, compiled from the Forest Service, BLM, BIA, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, the Alaska Interagency Fire Center and CAL FIRE. Burned areas and ignition dates from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), a program of the US Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service. Fire reports from Short, Karen C. 2022, Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014], 6th Edition, Forest Service Research Data Archive, doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6. Records before 2014 were joined by this site: a fire report to the burned area its MTBS identifier names, a perimeter to the burned area it lies in when the names or the sizes agree. Incident figures from ICS-209-PLUS: St. Denis, Lise A., Karen C. Short, Kathryn McConnell, Maxwell C. Cook, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Mollie Buckland and Jennifer K. Balch, 2023, All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020, Scientific Data 10, 112, doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01955-0; data on figshare, doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19858927.v3, licensed CC BY 4.0. This site matched each incident to the fire by the dataset’s own links where it has them, and otherwise by name, start date, state and size, and left out figures too large to be possible for a fire of its size.