MOUNT CHARLESTON, Nev. (AP) -- Officials vastly reduced their estimate of the size of a wildfire burning Wednesday in the mountains northwest of Las Vegas, from 1,500 acres to 290 acres.
``It surprised me, too,'' said Tim Sexton, chief of an elite national interagency fire management team that began arriving Tuesday to fight the Robber's fire on steep mountain slopes near a wooded canyon containing 350 homes. ``When we rolled in here, the initial estimate was 1,500 acres.''
Sexton said the new acreage total was based on an accurate assessment made once smoke and flames cleared and officials fixed the boundaries using global positioning systems.
The blaze, now 40 percent contained, was sparked by a truck fire Monday.
Sexton said four helicopters, directed by a spotter in a fixed-wing airplane, dropped water Wednesday on pockets of fire still burning inside the fire lines in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. No homes were threatened, and the fire could be fully contained by Friday, he said.
``The weather currently is cooperating,'' he said. ``But it's hot and dry, with potential for strong fire activity.''
Firefighters stopped the spread of the fire late Monday and Tuesday at the crest of an 11,000-foot ridge. The fire had raced up the slope from an elevation of about 8,200 feet, consuming drought-dry pinyon, juniper, sagebrush and pine.
``There's a collective sign of relief,'' said Scott Dinger, 39, a North Las Vegas police officer who lives in the canyon.
Elsewhere, the huge wildfires that have scorched interior forests in Alaska for weeks were slowed by rain. Two low-pressure systems moving in from the Bering Sea were expected to bring more rain and cooler temperatures to the Interior through the week, according to the National Weather Service.
Fires have burned 4.45 million acres in Alaska, making it the second-largest fire season since the state began tracking. There were 120 active fires on Tuesday. But because of the sparse population and vast acreage of Alaska, only 35 structures, mostly cabins and secondary homes, had been destroyed.
