By VERNON ROBISON
Over the past week, local residents have experienced the stresses of a natural catastrophe. In the course of just a couple of hours last Monday, the forces of nature destroyed, not just individual property, but major pieces of essential infrastructure. The flood did damage far beyond the ability of these small communities alone to repair or set right. We found ourselves dependent upon distant officials and unfamiliar systems in government and industry to make decisions on our behalf. In some cases, the systems in place to make those decisions worked smoothly, sensibly and beneficially to all. In other cases, they fell far short of that.
On Monday afternoon, amid all the other chaos of rain and floods, the power went out. Suddenly the hopes and wishes of 20,000 power customers in Moapa Valley, Virgin Valley and Lincoln County all turned to the utility operators for a quick and sensible fix. People didn’t care how it was done; only that it was done soon.
When all the chips were down, the problem seemed to be in the hands of the crew at Reid Gardner Power Station to find a solution. The regional management of NV Energy, to their credit, placed our local power needs high on the priority list. Even though we are not direct customers of NV Energy, their employees on site were instructed to treat us like we were.
The Reid Gardner crew quickly started working through the problem. Many of the operators present at the plant had the advantage of being local residents. They knew the territory. They understood the unique nuances of the community. They had relationships with the officials in the community whom they could contact directly for reliable information. Most of all, they were given the procedural “room” they needed to find a common-sense solution to the problem.
As a result, they made it happen. They innovated a way to solve the problem and bring the power back in service, despite the magnitude of the problem. It was an example of local decisions being made locally by people who know and understand the community. The Moapa Valley, and indeed the whole region, benefitted from it.
Unfortunately there were also plenty of examples where things didn’t work quite so smoothly. Not surprisingly, these usually happened because those people making the decisions had absolutely no idea of conditions on the ground, and they made no contact to local officials to find out.
One such example occurred on the very night of the disaster. Amid the darkness of the crisis on that Monday night, a bus-load of children departed from Ute Perkins Elementary School in Moapa, headed for home in Logandale/Overton. They had spent what must have been an exhausting afternoon and evening in the darkened school building hoping for flood waters to recede enough that it would be safe to travel back home. No doubt it was a harrowing experience for these young kids.
At around 7:30, as the waters subsided, local Metro officers reportedly made arrangements for the bus to pass along the Valley of Fire road to get to the lower valley. They were confident that there would be no problem doing that. The route was clear and no flooding had occurred there. Indeed it had been open throughout the afternoon as commuters from Las Vegas returned home. So it was expected to be no problem now.
But apparently disconnected from all of that, and unbeknownst to anyone involved, someone somewhere; in some nameless agency; had given the inexplicable order to close everything for the night: Interstate, State Park, everything.
So as the busload of children reached the gateway to Valley of Fire State Park they were denied access through the park for a time. After all that these kids, their teachers and their bus driver had been through, they actually received pushback from park staff about their passage home. They were stuck there. They couldn’t turn back and they couldn’t go forward.
Well, it was eventually resolved when the desperate bus driver finally made a call to a local Metro officer and pleaded for help. Some significant leverage had to be exerted before the bus was finally allowed passage through the park, only with a police escort.
The whole affair reportedly delayed the already long journey by 30-40 minutes. The kids didn’t get home to their parents until around 11:00 p.m. that night.
Where is the common sense in that? Who is making these decisions? Where are they? Why are they not connected in somehow to the unique needs of the community?
Of course, that was only the beginning of the week. As the time wore on, the transportation conundrums presented to the residents of Moapa were truly astonishing. Heaven only knows the reason why the northbound I-15 was closed off to the little bit of local Moapa traffic that needed to get through. Why were Moapa folks forced to travel the extra two hours up US 93 to Coyote Springs in order to get home from Overton?
When asked that question on Thursday, an NDOT official responded that there was concern about the safety of the Moapa exits. Well, they appeared perfectly safe. In fact, Moapa folks routinely used them to get on the southbound side of I-15. It was just the return trip where they were denied passage.
In any case, those exits were surely safer than the State Highway 168 where folks were being forced to travel. That two-lane highway was crumbling in various low-lying areas because of the flooding.
Of course, the tune changed as soon as the I-15 reopened Friday. As if by magic, the Moapa/Glendale exits suddenly were deemed safe. With no work on them at all. Amazing!
Once again, who was making these decisions? Where were they? Why could they not be approached or engaged by local leaders or representatives? On what logical basis were the decisions being made?
I’m sure that such decisions are easy enough to make from a distant conference room in Carson City or in Las Vegas, by people who have not touched the ground in Moapa. And it is true that in situations like this, things move fast and decisions have to be made. I get that.
But did anyone ever pick up the phone and make contact with someone who knew the territory? Did anyone ever bother to consider the local consequences of these quick and dirty decisions?
Those hasty decisions became an absolute nightmare for the poor folks of Moapa. After all, these weren’t vacationing Californians passing through. They weren’t truckers carrying a payload north. These were the people who live here and couldn’t get away. They were people who had already been bent under the stress of this disaster. They were the people who should most have been considered in the planning! Yet, the people of Moapa seemed to receive no consideration at all!
We have said it before, and we will say it again now: important decisions are best made at a local level, by people who know the situation on the ground. This is especially true in a fast-moving disaster situation like last week.
Yes, in this particular instance the stakes were high. The closure of I-15 was not just a local problem. It had a far-reaching economic effect. But would it have taken that much time for someone, whoever it was, to have come down off his/her pedestal and checked in with local leaders for a minute to try to solve some problems?
Perhaps there should be some reform to emergency management protocol. Central command over a disaster situation really ought to be given to a local official. In our case, our Metro officers would serve the purpose well. Whoever it is, they should know the nuances of the territory. They should be familiar with the road map of the area. They should be well connected into the various community organizations that could be mobilized to help come up with innovative solutions to problems. And they should be engaged in finding solutions to even big problems; like the closure of I-15.
The flippant decisions made by distant, high-and-mighty bureaucrats ought to at least be filtered through a local command center. If that were done, so much of the needless troubles that were placed on the shoulders of local residents last week could have been easily avoided.
Making the planning local would just add a little common sense to the chaos. And maybe it would encourage a willingness to put people over policy.
