In case you haven't been paying much attention to the news (especially for those of us not in Northern Nevada- notice today's R-J & Sun headlines), Reno has been enduring the wrath of the devastating Caughlin Wildfire over the course of this weekend. Fortunately, the fire is now almost entirely contained.
Chief Mike Brown, incident commander of the Sierra Front Incident Management Team, reports that the Caughlin Fire is 95 percent contained.
Brown said rehabilitation of dozer and hand line construction will take place today with concentration on bringing landscape back to its natural state and concentration on placing appropriate water bars for erosion control issues that may arise from the ground being unstable. [...]
Today’s main focus is to start the rehabilitation process: cleaning up the hillsides that lost vegetation and starting to stabilize them.
Fire crews are also continuing to extinguish hot spots and areas. One challenge, Regan said, is some of the destroyed homes are so badly damaged that firefighters cannot enter them, so water is being applied from the outside.
Coming from a place that always seemed to be on fire, I can at least somewhat understand the kind of fear that permeates a community upon seeing images of flames encroaching upon houses on the TV news. Hopefully, all of you reading this blog from up north are somewhere safe right now.
Wildfires are part of what we constantly have to deal with. After all, we live in the middle of a parched desert that has been coping with drought for most of the last decade. And unfortunately because of climate change, we can expect even more wildfires in the near future.
Hopefully this week, the Caughlin Fire will be put out and the families who have lost their homes can receive proper restitution. If you'd like to help, News 4 Reno has a list of organizations ready to provide help to those that need it most. And looking forward, Nevada will need to prepare for more wildfires like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment