Cottonwood Fire
The Cottonwood Fire burned 1,571 acres in Pershing County, Nevada, in 2010. It was discovered on September 12, 2010, and contained on September 17, 2010. The cause was recorded as human.
- Size
- 1,571 acres
- Discovered
- September 12, 2010
- Contained
- September 17, 2010
- Cause
- Human
Map
The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 1,695 acres. Point of origin as reported, 40.374, -118.133.
The record
- Reported final size
- 1,571 acres
- Burned area mapped by MTBS
- 1,695 acres
- Area inside the final perimeter
- 1,571 acres
- Discovered
- September 12, 2010, 10:14 a.m. local time
- Contained
- September 17, 2010, 7:45 a.m. local time
- Cause
- Human, Undetermined
- State
- Nevada
- County
- Pershing County
- Land ownership at origin
- Private
- Reporting unit
- Winnemucca District Office
- Agency
- Bureau of Land Management
- Unit
- NVWID
- Incident type
- Wildfire
- Unique fire identifier
- 2010-NVWID-000189
- MTBS fire identifier
- NV4038511814520100912
- MTBS assessment
- Initial
- Fire occurrence record
- W-612215
- Note on the perimeter
- GPSMap60CSX
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: 9, from September 12, 2010 to September 16, 2010. 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.
- Injuries
- 2
- Most personnel assigned
- 265 on September 12, 2010
- Most aircraft assigned
- 2
- Cost reported by the teams
- $510,000, in 2010 dollars
- Cause on the reports
- Human
- Primary fuel model reported
- Brush (2 feet)
- Suppression strategy reported
- Full suppression
Acres reported by day
The largest rise between two days’ reports was 72 acres, on September 14, 2010.
Reported acres by day, as a table
| Day | Acres | Change from the day before |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 12, 2010 | 1,500 | |
| Sep 13, 2010 | 1,504 | +4 |
| Sep 14, 2010 | 1,576 | +72 |
| Sep 15, 2010 | 1,576 | 0 |
| Sep 16, 2010 | 1,576 | 0 |
Other large fires in Nevada in 20105
| Fire | Acres | Start | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rock Creek Fire | 5,359 | Jul 24, 2010 | Natural |
| Seven Troughs Fire | 3,842 | Jul 25, 2010 | Natural |
| Bailey Fire | 2,687 | Aug 6, 2010 | Natural |
| Hump Fire | 1,858 | ||
| Grass Valley Fire | 1,208 | Aug 21, 2010 | 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.