As the Bug and Stallion fires burned across a combined 134,000 acres north of Reno this month, the Nevada Army National Guard sent helicopter crews to battle the flames.

The two fires tested Nevada's ability to fight wildfires on multiple fronts at once, a test that has defined the fire season thus far. 

"We have a lot of geography burning up all at the same time that typically doesn't," said Ryan Shane, Nevada's State Forester Firewarden and Nevada's top fire official.

In a typical year, he said, fires break out in different parts of the West at different times so resources can shift from one to the next without every state needing help simultaneously. This year, fires were burning across the region at the same time, leaving little slack anywhere.

The Bug Fire started Aug. 8 and merged with the neighboring Fred Mountain Fire into a blaze that grew past 93,000 acres, while the Stallion Fire ignited near Pyramid Lake two days later and burned more than 40,000 acres. Combined, they prompted evacuations for more than 13,000 residents and destroyed 11 structures. 

A federal incident management team assumed command of both fires within days of them igniting. Both are now largely contained — Bug at 94 percent and Stallion at 95 percent —  and evacuees in Rancho Haven, Red Rock and Antelope Valley have returned home.

The state owns almost none of the land burning within its borders — roughly 80 percent of Nevada is federally managed — and its state forestry agency operates at a fraction of the scale of California. Instead, Nevada leans on local fire districts, a statewide mutual aid system and federal partners to cover the gap.

A system built to lean on others

The Bureau of Land Management alone manages about two-thirds of Nevada's land and the Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF), which manages statewide wildland fire protection, runs on a base budget of about $4.5 million. The division spends closer to $24 million in an average fire year and relies on contingency funds and legislative advances to cover the difference. 

Read more: Audit shows Nevada forestry division failed to bill $33M in out-of-state firefighting costs

Shane said that gap doesn't slow down the state's actual response — resources move as soon as they're needed. But the bulk of the state's suppression work falls to local fire protection districts and to a mutual aid system, created under state law, that lets Nevada move resources between agencies and, when needed, pull in help from neighboring states.

"The state is really a relatively small player when it comes to actual assets," Shane said, referring to NDF's small aviation fleet of helicopters and single-engine air tankers. 

Nevada's value, he said, comes through its aviation contracts, agreements that let local agencies conduct mutual aid across the state and the funding it provides to backstop local and state firefighting costs each year.

What "stretched" actually looks like

The strain Shane describes isn't a Nevada-specific problem. The country's wildfire preparedness system has hit its highest tier, Preparedness Level 5, meaning the network that normally staggers firefighting resources across different regions and different weeks of the season is instead trying to cover most of the West at once.

"When the national preparedness level is at five, and now our state level fire preparedness level is at five, we're basically trading either within the state or amongst states resources from fire to fire to fire," Shane said. 

At that level, a national prioritization system decides which fires get available crews and aircraft first, based on what's at risk — critical infrastructure, populated areas, containment status — and Nevada's fires have so far ranked high enough to draw a "reasonable response" from federal partners.

During the height of the Bug and Stallion fires, NDF did have to choose which fire got priority, Shane said — and that has been the case all season. He added that Nevada was, during the same stretch, fighting seven to nine other fires across the state, which proved the state can handle multiple major fires simultaneously rather than as evidence it's approaching a breaking point.

"It's a fair assessment to say that the entire system is strained," Shane said. "Nevada is in that position, but so are all the states, particularly in the West."

How Nevada pulled it off

Federal land agencies have shed staff over the past year and a half, a subject of national debate over whether it's affecting wildfire response. In Nevada's case, state officials say that's not what shaped this response. 

Most of the firefighting resources used on Bug and Stallion — hand crews, aviation, engines, dozers and the incident management team — were ordered through Nevada's standing, year-round firefighting agreements, according to Chief Brett Compston of the Nevada Office of Emergency Management.

What filled the gaps outside those normal channels was almost entirely homegrown. NDF arranged for Nevada National Guard helicopter support directly and used a mutual aid agreement to bring in guard water tenders during the initial attack. 

The state's emergency management office activated Nevada's intrastate mutual aid system to send a strike team from Clark County to backfill Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District stations — freeing up Truckee Meadows' wildland-qualified crews to fight the fires directly instead of covering their home stations. 

Clark County Fire Chief Billy Samuels described the mutual aid system working as intended. He credited the state with managing the volume of simultaneous requests well, calling out how quickly resources were reassigned between incidents.

The guard also provided security support to the Washoe County Sheriff's Office, and emergency managers from Lyon County and the Reno-Tahoe International Airport were brought in to help staff Washoe County's emergency management team.

Washoe, Storey, Douglas, Lyon and Elko counties, Carson City and the Lake Tahoe area responded to assist initial attacks, then continued to provide additional support throughout the week. 

California's state fire agencies sent help too, and Compston said state agencies — the departments of Public Safety and Transportation — and NV Energy played supporting roles. 

With the national and Great Basin fire preparedness levels at 5 during the fires' first week, minimal resources were available anywhere, Compston said 

Conditions eased after that, as fires elsewhere in the West reached containment and rain and higher humidity moved into Northern Nevada. The Great Basin's preparedness level has since dropped to 3, though the national level remains at 5.

What isn't in question

Shane was direct about the fires' toll on NDF's crews and what he sees as the state's best tool for reducing it going forward: prevention and fuel reduction work. 

"Our staff have been fully allocated to fire suppression nonstop, other than their standard R&R days, for months, and I'm not sure I see it letting up," he said.

He pointed to fuel reduction work — thinning and treating vegetation before fires start — as a proven way to ease that burden, citing this year's Ward Fire near Ely and the Davis Fire. By his account, every dollar spent on fuel reduction saves roughly $4 in suppression costs later, and he said that work hasn't been deprioritized this year despite the strain on suppression resources.

He also noted that most of this year's fires, including the cluster north of Reno, were human-caused, which he said limits how predictable a fire season can be.