MOHAVE COUNTY – Mohave County efforts to battle a wildfire and COVID-19 were updated during Monday’s Mohave County Board of Supervisors meeting in Kingman. Dist. 2 Sup. Hildy Angius praised agencies and firefighters for what she called a “phenomenal job” protecting people and property from the Flag Fire that scorched nearly 1,300-acres in the Hualapai Mountains southeast of Kingman.
The fire that ignited on April 25 forced the evacuation of 200 homes in the community of Pine Lake and the closures of the county operated park and the private lodge within the park. Evacuees were allowed to return home beginning Friday, though the park and lodge remain closed.
Only minimal property loss occurred as fire containment is reported at 88%.
“The only structures that were lost were an outbuilding and a pump house and there was a deck on one house that burned,” said Byron Steward, Director of Risk and Emergency Management. “Otherwise the fire crews were able to protect all of the property up there so I think this went as well as can be expected.”
Steward said that so little property was lost is a testament to the value of annual fire safety planning in recognition that Pine Lake is one of the mountain populations most at risk from the threat of wild fire. He said crews will be busy mopping up hot spots in, logs, stumps and other debris piles.
“The other thing that we’ll be looking at doing is assessing the situation up there with regard to the burn scar and if we have the monsoon rains come in if it’s going to pose a threat to Pine Lake with flooding,” Steward said. “So our flood control division under Development Services will be looking at that this week.”
Department of Public Health Director Denise Burley told the board that there was a slight uptick in county COVID-19 cases last week, 153 cases versus 103 cases the week prior. She said 109,346 county residents had been vaccinated by Monday morning.
“We continue to see a decrease in demand for the vaccine within Mohave County,” Burley said. “For the last two weeks we have been unable to distribute all of the vaccine that the county’s been allocated. Last week we had an allocation of 10,000 doses of Moderna and I believe we were able to allocate about 3,500 of those.”
Burley told supervisors she is having trouble securing staff and volunteers to meet the board directive to reopen senior centers by May 7. The board voted to have them reopen by June 1 instead, allowing more time to position the centers to provide a hybrid mix of congregate, drive thru and meal delivery service at the same time.
Dave Hawkins
