Sisolak praises firefighters who battled Caldor blaze near Tahoe

STATELINE – At the borderline of the half-tamed Caldor Fire — successful gusty winds that threatened to rekindle it — Gov. Steve Sisolak and different officials visited with occurrence crews Friday for an up-close look astatine the enactment that helped support the blaze from encroaching into Nevada.

The politician toured sites successful Douglas County wherever crews person worked to wide vegetation astir NV Energy powerfulness lines that tally done the Sierra Nevada. At a staging country astatine the Hard Rock Hotel, the politician besides served luncheon to firefighters and visited a section occurrence presumption wherever firefighters from Clark County were dispatched to backmost up section teams warring the wildfire.

“This is redeeming a batch of structures, a batch of damage, and perchance a batch of lives,” the politician said of the clearings occurrence crews chopped astir powerfulness lines. The enactment creates a occurrence interruption and besides helps to guarantee powerfulness stays on.

The Caldor Fire, which has consumed much than 218,000 wood acres and immoderate 1,000 homes and different structures, was 53 percent contained arsenic of Friday morning. The occurrence started Aug. 14 southbound the assemblage of Grizzly Flats successful El Dorado County successful California and swept northeastward successful gusty upland winds toward South Lake Tahoe and the Nevada authorities enactment earlier winds calmed past week.

Winds had returned to the country Thursday evening, with a reddish emblem informing posted done 11 p.m. Friday.

The politician was joined Friday by Sen. Chris Brooks, D-Las Vegas, who sponsored 2 bills during the 2019 league that helped mitigate occurrence hazard with the backing of authorities agencies and section businesses.

Senate Bill 329 requires electrical utilities to taxable a earthy catastrophe extortion program to the authorities Public Utilities Commission, portion Senate Bill 508 allocated $5 cardinal to the authorities Division of Forestry, matching different national and section assistance money, which paid to grow the scope of wood absorption passim the state.

“It’s important that the nationalist knows that we request to beryllium much proactive,” Sisolak said. “The occurrence play is not a abbreviated play anymore, it’s becoming a 12 period season. The authorities needs to instrumentality a much proactive relation and it’s my intent that we proceed to bash that successful backing these programs to enactment successful conjunction with our local, our national partners and with NV Energy to marque definite that we tin proceed to bash this.”

Thanking archetypal responders, the politician said the teams were “busting their backs retired present doing things that different people…are not susceptible of doing.

“The sacrifice that these guys are making,” Sisolak said. “I couldn’t beryllium much grateful for everything that they’re doing.”

Contact Capital Bureau newsman Bill Dentzer astatine bdentzer@reviewjournal.com. Follow @DentzerNews connected Twitter.