So what have we learned? Has our behavior as individual home owners been altered by what we have seen? With years of drought under our collective belts, fire in Northern Nevada is a 12 month season. Complacency is a different thing all together.Īs we learned with the Caughlin fire in November of 2011 and the Washoe Drive fire in January of 2012, we don’t only have a summer fire season in the Truckee Meadows.
As an old timer fireman told me last year, “The further we are from one disaster, the closer we are to the next one.” Tucking frightening experiences into the back of our consciousness is part of the human means of survival. This may sound mean-spirited but I have good cause to think so. It moved uphill and was out of sight and mind all too quickly. Somehow the recent Hawken II fire didn’t quite do that for many, other than the responders and the residents at the bottom of that fire’s footprint. As I drove and watched the fire race up to the ridge line, I also thought, this is what we need, a local fire spectacular enough for all to see, to be reminded and to be frightened. Finally a fire of a scale and visibility that will be the “real” start of our summer wildfire season. At first I thought it was in Hidden Valley, but the curve of the freeway soon showed me it was up behind the Northern Nevada Medical Center, to the left of the big “S” on the hill in Sparks. As I got on the freeway in Reno, I saw the plume of smoke from the Virginia Range. I headed out of the office yesterday afternoon for an errand in Spanish Springs.
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