Northern Nevada fire triples in size, forcing evacuations
RENO — A Northern Nevada wildfire more than tripled in size on Tuesday, closing a U.S. highway, forcing evacuations and threatening hundreds of homes as hundreds of firefighters battled the flames from the air and on the ground.
The fire that broke out Monday night in the Pinenut Mountains southeast of Gardnerville sent up a giant plume of smoke visible from more than 70 miles away in Reno. It hadburnedacrossanestimated28 square miles of mostly sage brush, juniper and pinon pines in Douglas Countysoutheastoflaketahoe.
No injuries have been reported. At least one primary residence has been destroyed, along with 10 or 12 outbuildings, U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Lisa Mcnee said.
It had grown to 18,000 acres by Tuesday night, according to the BLM.
At least one large air tanker and several helicopters were dropping retardantandwaterontheflames,but the fire was burning out of control with no containment. Full containment isn’t expected until sometime next week. More than 400 firefighters were battling the blaze.
U.S. Highway 395 was closed in both directions for about a 16-mile stretch along the Sierra’s eastern front from the south end of Gardnerville to the junction with state Route208nearthecalifornia-nevada line.
NV Energy started cutting off power to some of the areas where more than 300 homes were threatened. The utility reported more than 500 residenceswerewithoutpowerat one point Tuesday evening.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency quickly approved disaster relief funds Tuesday to help fight the fire, and evacuation centers were set up at local motels in Gardnerville and Minden. wear one.
“We haven’t been wearing facial coverings or masks as consistently as we should and also the social distancing has been a challenge,” Leguen acknowledged.
The state Occupational Safety and Health Administration said on Monday that businesses in Southern Nevada have had only a 66 percent compliance rate for facialcoveringssincesisolak’sorder.
But Kirkpatrick said Tuesday that she believed most businesses were doingtheirpartortrying.shesaid shevisitedroughly15placesover the weekend and saw no blatant skirting of the rules. For businesses that are not following those rules, shesaidshehassoughtthecommitment of Southern Nevada cities to enforce the governor’s directive.
She pointed to an unlicensed rave heldovertheweekendinthenorth Las Vegas desert as an example ofthetypeofeventthatcanundermine the efforts of the public, health officials and government. Since late June, local government officials have visited more than 3,000 local businesses to provide education and guidance on the public health regulations, according to the county.
An appeal to young people
As coronavirus cases rise in Nevada, hitting the Hispanic community particularly hard, since the state entered into the second phase of its recoveryplanandreopenedcasinos, officials are keeping an eye on metrics including transmission rate and available hospital beds.
University Medical Center CEO Mason Vanhouweling said that 74 percent of acute care beds and 84 percent of ICU beds in Southern Nevada hospitals were occupied, with 12.7 percent and 31.4 percent, respectively, connected to confirmedcoronaviruscases.
Where most patients during the infancy of the pandemic were older, health officials are beginning to see more young people diagnosed with the virus, which Leguen attributed to increased social interaction and relaxedcompliancewithpublic healthguidelines.
Forty percent of confirmed cases in Southern Nevada involve people in their 20s and 30s, according to Vanhouweling.
“Ijustwanttounderlinetoour young population: I know that everybody’s been at home and wants to get out and enjoy Las Vegas, butthinkaboutthosethatyou love, think about your family, your co-workers,” he said. “Just because you are asymptomatic or feeling good, you can still spread the virus.”
Moving to the next phase
Yet Kirkpatrick remained assured that with continued increases in available testing and adherence to publichealthrules,coupledwith education efforts, the state will reduce its transmission rate and be abletomoveintothenextphaseof economic recovery.
“I myself don’t feel comfortable moving to a Phase Three at this point,” she said. “However I do think if everybody complies as we did early on in March, wears a mask, that we will see a significant change in the numbers and we’re still testing just as many.”
Contact Shea Johnson at sjohnson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @SHEA_LVRJ on Twitter. victims, and he wasn’t charged with murder in the second degree. How do you reconcile two seconds of any collision?”
Instead of re-examining the comparison, Moskal pivoted to another case in which a woman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a 2018 fatal crash.
“It’sthecourseofconductthat’s elongated here,” Moskal said. “Technology in cars is increasing rapidly. Cars can go 0 to 60 in two seconds now. … Imagine three years from now. Imagine 10 years from now. This is not 1985. We need to have a publicdeterrenceeffectinplace.”
This year, Senior Judge Michael Cherry, a former Nevada Supreme Court justice, threw out a second-degree murder charge against a man who admitted to police that he drank before he drove 115 mph and slammed into another car, killing the couple inside.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson has said that charging motorists with second-degree murder if they engage in reckless behavior and kill someone is not barred by law.
In a November order, the high court wrote that Leavell’s appeal raised “significant questions of statutory interpretation.” The justices did not indicate Tuesday how quickly they would rule on his case.
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.