Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Many Nevadans nervously follow situation

The fires marching through Southern California's brittle brush came close to UNLV professor Wole Soyinka's home in Upland, Calif., forcing him and his family to flee in the middle of the night, he said Tuesday.

Fire raced down Mount Baldy, so close to Soyinka's home that he and his family had to evacuate at midnight Saturday.

"It was an uncanny experience to see this wall of fire bearing down on you from the mountain," said Soyinka, a Nobel laureate and creative writing professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "A phalanx of firemen lined up trying to make a last stand against this before giving up on what proved to be impossible."

Soyinka said he had returned from his native Nigeria -- where he was once placed in exile -- "just in time to face the California fires."

The fire near Soyinka's home was a result of two fires from San Bernardino National Forest and Rancho Cucamonga converging.

"It really moved like two armies converging at the same time in a military campaign of destruction," Soyinka said. "It was fierce. It acted as if it had a will of its own."

Soyinka's California home was spared and he was able to return to it Sunday.

Soyinka is like many Las Vegans with ties to California -- they either have friends, family or property in the state. Most are left to watch or wait as the Golden State's most costly fire gobbles up homes, landscapes and lives.

For 80-year-old Dale King, who splits his time between his Southern California ranch and Las Vegas, wildland fires are a way of life, his son Wayne King said.

"My dad and his wife, Dorothy, who is 81, wouldn't leave the house," Wayne King said. The ranch, in King's family for a century, has withstood fires through the decades, he said.

The danger to firefighters comes when they try to protect homes and get trapped in the flames, King said. He knows, because his dad owned a bulldozer that cut through the dry grass to build a fire break in past wildland infernos.

"When I was a kid, I drove a 'dozer like they're doing in this fire," Wayne King said. "Those are the guys that could become trapped."

Las Vegas firefighter John Gamby, chief of operations, said he has a nephew who was about a mile from one of the fires and had been evacuated near Fontana.

Sarah Ralston, a public relations executive who represents several high-profile clients in Las Vegas, said Tuesday she was still anxiously awaiting news about the fate of her vacation home near Lake Arrowhead.

"The latest I've heard is it's about two hours away from Lake Arrowhead," Ralston said Tuesday. "I can't get in. I can't get my things out. I have sort of precious family mementos there that I don't want to lose, but there's nothing I can do about it."

Lake Arrowhead, which is at an elevation of 5,100 feet has become particularly dry in recent years because trees were hit by drought and a beetle infestation that devastated hundreds of trees.

Ralston has resigned herself to the notion that the home she has had for five years might not make it.

"It's just sort of wait and see at this point," Ralston said.

The Las Vegas gaming industry is keeping an eye on how the fires are affecting casinos in California.

Harrah's Rincon casino, about 40 miles north of San Diego, closed early Sunday and is not expected to reopen until next week, a Harrah's spokesman said.

A 200-room hotel adjacent to the casino was also closed by Harrah's.

The Pala casino at the Barona Valley Ranch resort, also north of San Diego, remains open, and is actually very busy, hotel spokesman Coley McAvoy said.

"If anything we've seen an increase in business, and I think that's partially because we're really the only casino that is still open down here," McAvoy said. "We've also provided rooms to people who have lost their homes."

Many Las Vegas residents are worried about loved ones who are or near the fires.

Las Vegas resident Mitch Dosch's mother lives in Solano Beach, about 20 miles north of San Diego, and didn't go to work Tuesday.

"They're trying to keep people off the freeways, and she just stayed home today," Dosch said of his mother, who works as a bookkeeper.

The fire affected Dosch Sunday night, as he, his wife and twin 22-month-old daughters headed to San Diego for the scheduled football game Monday between the San Diego Chargers and the Miami Dolphins.

Dosch, a season ticket-holder for the Chargers, had taken U.S. 95 to Interstate 10 to get to San Diego because Interstate 15 was closed due to the fires.

"We had just passed Needles, Calif., when we heard on the radio that the game had been moved to Arizona, so instead of making a right we made a left," Dosch said. "We had planned to stay with my family in San Diego, but when we got to Phoenix we had to find a motel.

"We already have toys and cribs and things for our kids with my family in San Diego, but we didn't have anything in Arizona, so it was a little crazy."

Las Vegas resident Doug Murray said the fires came too close to his brother's home in Rancho Cucamonga.

"He was somewhat concerned Saturday night," Murray said. "It was just a mile and a half due north of him."

Metro Police Sgt. Tim Shalhoob has two cousins that live near the fires, one just outside Santee and the other in Simi Valley.

"It seems like many if not most of the Las Vegans who came here from somewhere else came from California, so because of that and so many other reasons there is a real connection between Las Vegas and California," he said.

Shalhoob said he spoke with one of his cousins Monday night "and he said everybody down there has campers loaded up and ready to go because they're worried that they will get evacuation orders if the fire comes over the hill."

The Metro sergeant said the situation is particularly traumatic for his cousin, Steve Shalhoob, because "he had to rebuild (his home) once before, as a result of the earthquake down there about 10 years ago."

"She seemed real distraught," Brickell said. "The chances of their house still being there seems real low, based on what other people told them."

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