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January 28, 2008 -- Most Burners know Fernley, Nevada, as the final gateway to Black Rock country,
the last place to fuel up the car and the stomach before entering the high desert. For most of us, it is a place
of summer, but in the predawn hours of Jan. 5, residents were forced to flee their homes when a levee broke on a
31-mile irrigation canal, releasing a flood of icy wintertime water that covered parts of the city to a depth of
at least three feet.
Nobody was injured, but Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada wrote to President Bush that 4,000 of Fernley's 18,850 residents
had been displaced after a two-square-mile residential area had been inundated. He estimated the cost of the damage
at $3.3 million. The president subsequently declared Fernley, which sits about 50 miles east of Reno at a bend of
the Truckee River, as a disaster area qualifying for federal assistance.
Assistance also came within hours of the flood from Burners Without Borders, a Burning Man affiliate that provides
disaster relief. The group raised at least $5,500 was raised in the first week after the levee break to support its
efforts.
Tom Price, a Burners Without Borders spokesman, said in a Jan. 11 report, "As you may recall, the group Burners
Without Borders was created in response to Hurricane Katrina, which over six months had 200 volunteers providing
more than $1 million in disaster relief aid to the Gulf Coast.
"Immediately following the news of the flood, three BWB volunteers--Elisha Lyon, Matt Deluge, and Scott Stephenson
headed down from Gerlach to assess the situation and see how they could help. After returning to Gerlach to get
supplies (BWB returned from the Gulf Coast with two containers of supplies) they're back in the affected area helping
clean up."
Price said he suspected that the outpouring of support for the group had to do with Burner affection for Fernley,
"our neighbor down the street."
He added: "It's an interesting time for BWB, as we also have teams in Pisco, Peru, cleaning up after an earthquake
there last fall. I guess the lesson to take away from all this is that if a group of people can build the 8th-largest
city in Nevada and take it down without a trace, they know a little bit about starting from nothing (or in these cases,
a pile of debris) and making the best of it, and that a community that helps each other can do incredible things, even
in the face of tremendous odds."
Various Burners and friends have been joining in the effort. A typical day's effort: "A couple have been running loads
of debris back and forth to the dump, while a dozen showed up at one house this AM that was still untouched, have ripped
out the carpets, and are just about finishing up the drywall--and that's before lunch!"
As seen during Hurricane Katrina, flooding causes a host of problems. Besides ruining many household goods and causing
structural damage to buildings, it can release toxic substances into the environment.
Fernley has been a boom town in recent years. Unlike the tourist Meccas of Las Vegas and Reno, the city's economic growth
reflects commercial development. Amazon.com and Wal-Mart have major distribution centers near the city, which was only
incorporated in 2001. Its population has grown from 8,543 in 2000 to today's level of 18,850.
But all was not well before the flood. Gov. Gibbons's letter to President Bush said that the city has suffered from the
burst American housing bubble, and home values there had declined by 20 percent in the past two years. The mostly
middle-class residents do not have large pools of savings that they can tap to pay for cleaning up the mess, the
governor said.
To contribute to Burners Without Borders, see the web site at www.burnerswithoutborders.org
See http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-01-05-voa29.cfm
for an article about the storm that led to the levee breaking.
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