LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Firefighters went to round-the-clock operations Thursday to quell the last major wildfire in remote deserts, mountains and canyons of southern Nevada.
The Delamar fire remained 40 percent contained, burning toward the northeast in an uninhabited 240-square-mile fire area between Alamo and Caliente, said Dorothy Harvey, a federal Bureau of Land Management fire spokeswoman. No structures were threatened.
''It made a run for the border yesterday,'' Harvey said Thursday, adding that about 400 acres burned Wednesday. ''We'll have crews on it 24 hours now.''
Fire operations in southern Nevada had been conducted during daylight since fires were sparked by lightning June 22. Harvey said flames Thursday were in an area where incident commanders determined firefighters could safely conduct night operations.
An estimated date of containment was pushed back to Saturday with 568 firefighters, seven helicopters and seven bulldozers on the fire lines some 110 miles from Las Vegas. Containment had been expected Thursday.
Three firefighters were treated Wednesday for dehydration, Harvey said, but no serious injuries were reported. One firefighter suffered a knee injury Tuesday and another twisted an ankle.
Harvey said initial estimates put the cost of fighting the Delamar fire at almost $1.7 million.
Elsewhere, the Duzak fire was declared contained Wednesday in a nearly 800-square-mile area along the Nevada-Utah border. No structures were damaged during the two-week suppression effort, which drew more than 1,000 firefighters from Nevada and seven other Western states.
The Duzak blaze was the biggest of more than a dozen fires in southern Nevada. It covered a patchwork of some 508,751 acres, including bighorn sheep and threatened desert tortoise habitat. Officials said about half the acreage in the fire lines burned.
The cost of containing the Duzak fire was estimated at $5.75 million. One firefighter suffered a hip injury parachuting into the fire zone and another broke an ankle the first week.
Another blaze south of Caliente, dubbed the Meadow Valley fire, was contained after covering about 228 square miles.
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