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Nevada is on fire. Is this the new normal · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Our weather conditions continue to be challenging.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Hot, dry, windy.
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: And no end in sight anytime soon.
• 0:08
  Speaker 4: It was just really foggy. It just looks really bad
• 0:10
  Speaker 4: and it's starting to get really bad up there. We
• 0:14
  Speaker 4: saw the fire come down the hill, so I gathered
• 0:18
  Speaker 4: up all the family and pre took off.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Our priorities continue to be the same. Life, safety first,
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: property second.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: This fire is extremely close to these houses. It is
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: ridiculous right now. It is very close and it is widespread.
• 0:44
  Speaker 5: You just heard it. There are wildfire threatening a city
• 0:47
  Speaker 5: and edging closer to homes. Flames continue to burn out
• 0:51
  Speaker 5: of control in the US state of Nevada, forcing more
• 0:53
  Speaker 5: than ninety thousand people from their homes and causing schools
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: to close. The Hawk Place is burning on the skirts
• 1:00
  Speaker 5: of Reno, a city of around two hundred and eighty
• 1:02
  Speaker 5: thousand people in western Nevada close to the border with California.
• 1:07
  Speaker 5: The WAFA is not contained. It's already burned more than
• 1:11
  Speaker 5: fifty square kilometers of land and injured at least six people.
• 1:15
  Speaker 5: But what else do we know about how it started?
• 1:18
  Speaker 5: His un North America correspondent shamikhaleil well.
• 1:21
  Speaker 6: The fire was first reported on Saturday, and it was
• 1:24
  Speaker 6: reported near the Hawk Meadow Trail in Washoe County, and
• 1:27
  Speaker 6: this is why it's called the Hawk Fire. Now officials
• 1:30
  Speaker 6: say that it was caused by human activity, although how
• 1:34
  Speaker 6: exactly that is still under investigation. We know that it
• 1:38
  Speaker 6: started as a brush fire and then it moved with
• 1:41
  Speaker 6: extraordinary speed and within hours it really burned through more
• 1:45
  Speaker 6: than ten thousand acres and now it's up to fifteen
• 1:48
  Speaker 6: thousand acres. It's driven towards heavily populated area on the
• 1:53
  Speaker 6: outskirts of Reno, and this is really the bit concern,
• 1:57
  Speaker 6: the speed by which it's moving, the unpredictability of it,
• 2:00
  Speaker 6: and its proximity too highly populated areas. Now, strong winds
• 2:05
  Speaker 6: have pushed the fire forward, and then extremely dry conditions
• 2:09
  Speaker 6: have also meant that they've driven this as fuel, which
• 2:13
  Speaker 6: means that the land is really a tinderbox for more fires.
• 2:17
  Speaker 6: And this is what firefighters have been up against. They've
• 2:20
  Speaker 6: been up against the weather that's been working against them,
• 2:23
  Speaker 6: and this is why people have been warned that this
• 2:26
  Speaker 6: fire is not contained at the moment and also not predictable.
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: Tens of thousands of people have been told to evacuate
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: from an area close to Reo as the large wildfire
• 2:36
  Speaker 5: reached the outskirts of the city. Let's say from some
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: of those affected, and it was pretty tough.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: It was horrible trying to get up here, trying to
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: go to the house, you know, just trying to get
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: stuck for me and the kids.
• 2:47
  Speaker 7: So I'm still scarily yet it's like you don't know
• 2:52
  Speaker 7: if the winds are going to shift and it's going
• 2:53
  Speaker 7: to get worse, you know, so you're just kind of
• 2:55
  Speaker 7: I got all myself in my car and in his car,
• 2:58
  Speaker 7: so just like ready to go if we need to go.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: And it came super fast. Within twenty minutes. We were
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: told we got the alarm to go ahead and get
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: out of there. So we saw the fire come down
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: the hill. So I gathered up all the family and
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: we took.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: Off well by to Shima. Now, with more on how
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: the evacuations are.
• 3:20
  Speaker 6: Going, tens of thousands of residents have been affected by this.
• 3:24
  Speaker 6: We have forty two thousand already being told that they
• 3:27
  Speaker 6: had to evacuate immediately, some with just a few minutes
• 3:30
  Speaker 6: to get ready to leave, and they really could just
• 3:34
  Speaker 6: grab whatever they could because essentially they're trying to outrun
• 3:38
  Speaker 6: the inferno and get to evacuation centers. Forty five thousand
• 3:42
  Speaker 6: have been put on notice to be ready to move
• 3:45
  Speaker 6: when they are told to do so. Patients have also
• 3:48
  Speaker 6: been moved from a couple of medical centers. Schools are closed,
• 3:52
  Speaker 6: many roads are closed as well, and we've heard from
• 3:55
  Speaker 6: the Reno Police Chief, Correos alf Arino, who urged people
• 3:59
  Speaker 6: to be prepared and to leave as soon as they're
• 4:02
  Speaker 6: being told to do so.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: We really want you to prioritize what those evacuation orders mean.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: It means not waiting until the evacuation order comes out.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Make sure you have your important documents, your medication, your kids,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: your rally, plan of where you're going to reunify after this,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: and plan on being out for a couple of days.
• 4:21
  Speaker 6: Well.
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: Local Roborta Lucia Starbuck from KU and our Public Radio
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: in Nevada describes the impact the fire is having on
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: residents and authorities.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: The governor declared a state of emergency, so that means
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: the state's National Guard is helping attack it from aircraft,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: helping police help people evacuate. There is about eight hundred
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: firefighting personnel on it today. Because that fire is burning
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: on this large hill kind of just about in town
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: almost There are neighborhoods at the bottom of each side
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: of the hill, so people have gone to the evacuation site.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: We know that the casino hotels filled up really quickly.
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  Speaker 1: There is road closure, so some people are being diverted
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: over to the state over in California. So it's kind
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of been the mad dash, you know, really heavy traffic
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: of people trying to leave the area. There are some
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: pretty horrifying videos of people that people posted while driving
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and the flames getting really close to a major highway
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and it did ultimately skip that highway.
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: It's not the first time this summer that we have
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: seen wildfires threatening major cities. In July there were fires
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: near Bordeaux in France, and here in England, homes were
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: destroyed by a wildfire and StarBridge just a couple of
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: weeks ago. So why does it feel like more communities
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: are finding themselves in the path of these fires. Here's
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: Matt Taylor from our weather team.
• 5:33
  Speaker 8: Part of the reason we might be seeing wildfires closer
• 5:36
  Speaker 8: and more regularly close to cities is due to the
• 5:39
  Speaker 8: size of them We're seen in the US. Studies have
• 5:42
  Speaker 8: shown that frequency of wildfires hasn't increased much, but the
• 5:45
  Speaker 8: size of area burned has and as those wildfires get
• 5:49
  Speaker 8: bigger in size, the great likelihood is they are going
• 5:52
  Speaker 8: to get closer to populated areas, and so around the
• 5:55
  Speaker 8: outskirts of cities. As wildfires closed in, you get more
• 5:59
  Speaker 8: prone to see wildfires arrive well.
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: Nevada is a state at high risk from large wildfires
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: because of its dry climate and abundance of invasive grasses.
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: Authorities in Renos say this fire is caused by human activity,
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: But what role does climate change play in the conditions
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: that allow fires like this to take hold and then spread.
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: Here's Matt Taylor again.
• 6:20
  Speaker 8: Climate change isn't causing wildfires. In fact, over eighty percent
• 6:24
  Speaker 8: of wildfires in the United States are caused by people.
• 6:27
  Speaker 8: But human induced climate change is what's making fire conditions
• 6:32
  Speaker 8: ripe for those fires to occur. So we're seeing longer lasting,
• 6:36
  Speaker 8: more extreme droughts, and that of course dries out the
• 6:39
  Speaker 8: ground and makes the vegetation more prone to catching light
• 6:43
  Speaker 8: and spreading more rapidly.
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: Well, this current fire is in Reno in Nevada, but
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: extremely close to the border with California, So how concerned
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: a neighboring states and how widespread is the wildfire threat
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: across the region. Back to our Los Angeles correspondent Shima Khalil.
• 6:58
  Speaker 6: Well, there's a great deal of concers or from neighboring states,
• 7:01
  Speaker 6: especially here in California. Reno is really on the fault
• 7:06
  Speaker 6: lines between Nevada and California, so California is watching this
• 7:12
  Speaker 6: and monitoring the Hawk fire fairly closely. I think across
• 7:15
  Speaker 6: the American West there is a bigger story of many,
• 7:20
  Speaker 6: many wildfires that are happening, some of them not very controlled.
• 7:24
  Speaker 6: We've seen Washington State, for example, in the last few weeks,
• 7:28
  Speaker 6: suffering from wildfires. In Nevada itself, this is the latest
• 7:32
  Speaker 6: one in three fires that are happening in this state,
• 7:36
  Speaker 6: and I think there is a great deal of concern
• 7:38
  Speaker 6: among neighboring states about how fast this can go, the
• 7:41
  Speaker 6: resources that they have to contain it. But again, it's
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: also about the effect on populations. If this is happening
• 7:50
  Speaker 6: in vast areas of forests, that's one thing. If it's
• 7:53
  Speaker 6: getting close to residential areas, remember it's also back to school,
• 7:56
  Speaker 6: so it's going to affect schools. It's going to affect universities.
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: So officials are saying that they're watching this quite closely
• 8:04
  Speaker 6: to see what kind of resources that they need, to
• 8:06
  Speaker 6: see what precautions they can be that can be put
• 8:10
  Speaker 6: in place. And remember again, the fire in Nevada is
• 8:13
  Speaker 6: not contained, which means the concern about it traveling far
• 8:16
  Speaker 6: and fast is still very much into the minds of
• 8:20
  Speaker 6: officials and of course members of the community.
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: And that's all you need to know about the wife
• 8:25
  Speaker 5: in Reno