Jason Hidalgo

jhidalgo@rgj.com

Editor's note: As part of a three-month investigation into the Little Valley prescribed burn that went out of control and destroyed 23 homes, Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Jason Hidalgo interviewed a wide range of sources and made several public records requests under Nevada’s Public Records Law. Among them were requests with the Nevada Division of Forestry for documents related to the prescribed burn and subsequent wildfire, including the prescribed burn plan, staffing levels and communications such as texts, emails and letters. The RGJ requested transcripts for 911 calls before and during the fire, as well as weather reports for the area and weather advisories for the days during and after the prescribed burn. The RGJ also obtained information from public meetings as well as other documentation.

On a wind-whipped October night, embers from a controlled burn set 10 days earlier in timber above Washoe Valley sparked and flared.

Smoke rose from the site, prompting a call to 911 that was dismissed as unfounded. Twelve minutes later, a second 911 call brought firefighters out. By the time they reached the burn site, the blaze had grown to at least 5 acres and was spreading fast.

When the Little Valley Fire was finally contained at 2,291 acres more than five days later, 23 homes and 17 outbuildings, including historic structures, had been destroyed.

A Reno Gazette-Journal investigation found that the decision to attempt a large controlled burn in a wind-prone area combined with inadequate staffing — including lack of personnel at the burn site at the time the fire started despite forecasts warning of strong winds — were key factors in the Little Valley Fire getting started and quickly growing out of control. Those findings were supported by an independent burn review requested by the state and released Wednesday after the RGJ investigation. Delays in responding to the fire and calling for additional resources affected how fast the wildfire could be contained as well.

Debbie Sheltra remembers the September meeting that the Nevada Division of Forestry held with residents and volunteer firefighters who had concerns about the planned burn to clear forest undergrowth. The process removes fuels that could make future wildfires more severe.

NDF forest health specialist Gene Phillips, who would act as the burn boss for the project, assured them that it would be done right, Sheltra said.

Sheltra says she specifically asked Phillips what they would do to make sure their houses didn’t burn down.

“(Phillips) put his hand across his heart and assured us, ‘This is my fire, I’m the burn boss and we will not leave the fire, we will be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week for six weeks or six months, whatever it takes — we will not leave the fire unattended,’” Sheltra said.

“I said, ‘I don’t believe you guys.’”

She was right to be skeptical. A month later, her home of 40 years was a smoldering pile.

A three-month investigation by the RGJ found the following based on interviews and documents obtained through research and multiple public records requests:

Poor planning played a role in the escaped burn: Agencies were unprepared to deal with the impact of the burn as well as the initial fire once it escaped the containment area. Staffing also was an issue given the size and scope of the project. Total personnel for the Nevada Division of Forestry, the agency that oversaw the burn, is down one-third since the recession, and the agency had several staff members on annual or sick leave leading up to the burn. At least one fire district also declined to oversee the prescribed burn because it was too large. One fire behavior analyst says the complexity of the Little Valley Burn should have been rated as more difficult, which would have required oversight by personnel with higher certification. The Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District, meanwhile, said its initial responders did not have the resources to deal with the fire, which quickly grew by tenfold after they arrived.

Agencies were unprepared to deal with the impact of the burn as well as the initial fire once it escaped the containment area. Staffing also was an issue given the size and scope of the project. Total personnel for the Nevada Division of Forestry, the agency that oversaw the burn, is down one-third since the recession, and the agency had several staff members on annual or sick leave leading up to the burn. At least one fire district also declined to oversee the prescribed burn because it was too large. One fire behavior analyst says the complexity of the Little Valley Burn should have been rated as more difficult, which would have required oversight by personnel with higher certification. The Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District, meanwhile, said its initial responders did not have the resources to deal with the fire, which quickly grew by tenfold after they arrived. The NDF failed to adequately monitor the burn site: Despite promises to concerned property owners and the public that it would patrol the area “for weeks” until the next significant snow or rain, NDF presence was lacking at the burn site when the fire started. Forecasts from the National Weather Service in Reno also provided ample warning about strong winds at the Little Valley Burn site on the evening of Oct. 13 and morning of Oct. 14, when the fire flared up. Records provided by NDF to the RGJ showed NDF staffing for the project was down to five people by Oct. 13 for mop-up operations. The agency did not provide staffing information for the day the fire started on Oct. 14. Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District said it was first to arrive at the scene of the fire, not NDF. NDF deferred to the upcoming independent review when asked about staff presence for the day.

Despite promises to concerned property owners and the public that it would patrol the area “for weeks” until the next significant snow or rain, NDF presence was lacking at the burn site when the fire started. Forecasts from the National Weather Service in Reno also provided ample warning about strong winds at the Little Valley Burn site on the evening of Oct. 13 and morning of Oct. 14, when the fire flared up. Records provided by NDF to the RGJ showed NDF staffing for the project was down to five people by Oct. 13 for mop-up operations. The agency did not provide staffing information for the day the fire started on Oct. 14. Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District said it was first to arrive at the scene of the fire, not NDF. NDF deferred to the upcoming independent review when asked about staff presence for the day. Response to the fire was delayed, affecting how fast it could be contained: A call at 1:23 a.m. about smoke at the burn site was later dismissed as “unfounded,” causing a TMFPD fire engine to return to the station three minutes after it left. After a second call about smoke at the burn site, it took TMFPD more than an hour to get to the main fire area after crews were dispatched, according to 911 transcripts. TMFPD did not request help from Reno and Sparks fire departments until 3:26 a.m., nearly 40 minutes after responders arrived at the scene. The request also indicated that extra equipment would be needed at daybreak instead of immediately. NDF's response to the fire, meanwhile, was affected by “leave and staffing,” according to documentation obtained by the RGJ.

Many property owners who suffered damages continue to express frustration with the incident. Debbie Sheltra's son Ryan, general manager of the Bonanza Casino, remains livid about the havoc wreaked by the escaped burn and the lack of communication from NDF afterward.

"They have yet to even issue an apology for the destruction they created," Ryan Sheltra said. "It is shameful.”

At about 4 a.m. on Oct. 14, Little Valley resident Norm Azevedo was suddenly roused from sleep by law enforcement.

“The sheriff woke us up … and said ‘prepare to evacuate,’” Azevedo said. “I was still disoriented — I said ‘prepare to evacuate for what?’”

Azevedo hiked up to a ridge on his 532-acre property after being told a fire was approaching.

His confusion quickly turned to fear.

“I looked down the ridge and the fire was so big, it sounded like a jet engine was coming down the mountain,” Azevedo said. “I was seeing trees 100 feet tall explode. It was shaking the ground. Under your feet, you can actually feel the ground shaking.”

Azevedo lost about 100 trees in the Little Valley Fire. It could have been much worse.

Debbie Sheltra, 68, lost the home where she'd lived for nearly 40 years and raised her children. Today, nothing is left of what she called her Shangri-La except rubble and ash. What few charred mementos she was able to recover are now in a rented house — just a fraction of a lifetime’s worth of priceless family photos and heirlooms that have since been reduced to memory.

“I have to tell you, they were tearing down my foundation yesterday and it was so hard to see,” a tearful Sheltra said on Feb. 2. “It was like 40 years of my life was gone.”

Ed Evans, who owns Black Gold Arabian Ranch in Washoe Valley, lost a ranch house and several barns. To make things worse, mudflows roll down from the fire site to his property every time it rains. Parts of Evans' pastures are now covered with a thick coat of gray muck.

"It's pretty bad," Evans said. "You just have all this mud and sand covering the field."

Some property owners are looking into legal action against NDF. An independent fire investigation consultant interviewed by the RGJ estimated total damages could potentially exceed $80 million. Reno lawyer David Houston filed a lawsuit against the State of Nevada on Feb. 10 on behalf of several clients, including Sheltra and Bunny Ranch brothel owner Dennis Hof, whose home burned in the fire.

“All individuals we have spoken with and experts we talked to indicated to us absolute frustration with the model utilized and manpower available (for the burn),” Houston said. “It was sort of a lit powder keg waiting to explode and, unfortunately, it did.”

A U.S. Forest Service incident management team oversaw an independent review of the Little Valley Burn. The group's review was released publicly just hours after the Reno Gazette-Journal posted its investigation online and confirmed several of the RGJ's findings.

The review, which is standard procedure after an escaped burn, is not an investigation and is completely independent, said Mark Regan, public information officer for the national team and an assistant fire marshal with the North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District.

“It was requested by the state for us to do the review,” Regan said. “No one from NDF is part of the team so it’s an outside agency review of the process … with a team of experts from all sorts of fields.”

With the review finished, it is now up to the state of Nevada to look at its findings and decide what action to take. Gov. Brian Sandoval expressed sorrow to the victims of the fire and said the state will be taking a close look at the independent report's results.

“Bringing in an outside professional perspective was an important step in understanding how this tragedy occurred,” Sandoval said. “I will review the report with my team and we will discuss the findings with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources."

As part of its regular updates during the prescribed burn, NDF said that “foresters will patrol the area of the burn for weeks to hold and mop up until a significant season-ending rain or snow occurs.”

Whether the agency had the manpower to adequately monitor the 208-acre burn area, however, is another question.

Since peaking with a full-time staff of 275 in 2005 before the recession, NDF is down to 184 full-time employees statewide. Of those, 76 used annual or sick leave at some point leading up to the Little Valley Burn, though NDF did not specify how many of those were in Northern Nevada.

The Reno Gazette-Journal filed a public records request with NDF for staffing for the Little Valley Burn and was provided documentation of its staffing levels for the project from Oct. 4 to Oct. 13. The staffing record says that the burn was "staffed operationally, commensurate with the need and resources on site" for that period. There was no staffing record, however, for Oct. 14.

Download the the NDF burn plan here.

The NDF's plan for the controlled burn indicated that about 110 to 120 people would be involved with the project. NDF staffing accounted for 29 people on each of the first two days of the burn, according to records provided by the agency to the RGJ. The number of NDF personnel steadily decreased during the mop-up and monitoring phase to five by Oct. 13, the day before the fire.

At the peak of the burn, the forestry division said staffing also included:

four people from the Reno Fire Department

one captain from the Carson City Fire Department

two members of the U.S. Forest Service's Black Mountain Hotshots team

eight inmate squads with 12 crew members each

NDF declined comment on several other aspects of the Little Valley Burn and resulting fire, citing potential lawsuits as well as the independent review, which was still ongoing at the time.

Asked on Jan. 30 about the missing day, NDF responded that all available records have been provided and declined to confirm whether it had personnel monitoring the actual burn site when the Little Valley Fire started.

Documents acquired through a public records request by the Gazette-Journal of the 911 dispatch just prior to and during the fire did not indicate that there was NDF personnel at the burn site when the fire started. Instead, initial confirmation of the fire was made by Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Alex Kukulus at around 1:52 a.m. while en route to the location, according to the transcript.

Kukulus confirmed with the Gazette-Journal on Feb. 1 that TMFPD was first on the scene.

“We initiated the initial response but contacted NDF within five minutes,” Kukulus said. “We happened to arrive first with NDF arriving shortly thereafter.”

Ryan Sheltra says that there was no NDF staff at the burn site according to witnesses he has talked to — something NDF has yet to confirm with property owners among a host of unanswered questions, he said. Sheltra called the situation inexcusable.

“NDF has gone radio silent,” he said. “They won't answer the question as to why they abandoned their post the night of the fire."

“This is totally unacceptable for a public agency,” Sheltra said. “NDF's fire warden Joe Freeland and Little Valley burn boss Gene Phillips owe the public an answer as to how they allowed a fire they started to burn down 23 homes and over 2,200 acres of forest.”

The independent review has since confirmed that crews were pulled from the burn site on the afternoon of Oct. 13.

The size of the prescribed burn posed a logistical challenge for area fire agencies. It was originally planned to cover about 250 acres at the Whittell Forest in Little Valley, which creases the Carson Range above Washoe Valley.

North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District was approached about overseeing the prescribed burn. The agency, however, typically does controlled burns of 20 acres to 30 acres, said Devon Reese, a lawyer who represents several fire agencies, including NLTFPD.

“(NDF) came to our agency at one point in time to inquire about our willingness to be the burn boss, and our agency is just too small to be doing that,” Reese said. “North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District doesn’t have the resources to do a 300-acre prescribed burn."

“You could ask any person in the fire community and they would say this (burn) was unnecessarily larger than it should have been,” Reese added. “Certainly, hindsight is 20/20, but the better practice is to not bite off more than you can chew, especially if you don’t have resources to man the fire lines and make sure you have safe practices.”

North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District agreed to do the technical review for the burn plan, which was signed off by its fuels management officer, Isaac Powning, on May 26. The document is required before each controlled burn and provides an analysis of the proposed project, including resources, objectives and complexity.

The district did the technical review as a “professional courtesy,” said NLTFPD Fire Chief Ryan Sommers. Doing the technical review meant going through a checklist and making sure all the items listed such as equipment, personnel and monitoring were included in the burn plan, Sommers said.

“It’s not necessarily a recommendation (of the plan),” Sommers said. “We did not write any part of the plan.”

In a text message obtained by the Gazette-Journal as part of a second public records request with the NDF for correspondence related to the burn and fire, a former state fire management officer for the agency advised a current staff member on Oct. 17 that the training and qualifications of people involved with the Little Valley Burn will be scrutinized by those reviewing or investigating the case.

The former staffer, Bob Patton, is a Placerville, Calif., resident who also served as U.S. Forest Service fire chief for Eldorado National Forest before taking NDF’s state fire management officer position. Patton worked at NDF for six months before leaving the agency in 2012.

“Training and certification would garner interest as they would in any investigation along those lines,” Patton said when reached by phone on Feb. 1. “It’s standard operating procedure.”

Asked what he thought of NDF adherence to requirements for training and qualifications during his time at the agency, Patton declined to comment.

Patton, however, thought some of the elements in the prescribed plan for the Little Valley Burn that were rated as having “moderate” complexity should have been rated as “high.” Patton used to be certified as a “Burn Boss 1” — which means he could oversee the most complex burns when he was still certified. Patton remains qualified as a fire behavior analyst.

Things that can impact the difficulty of a burn include the likelihood of a burn escaping, access to the area, fuel and smoke management, weather conditions, safety and risk. Changing the complexity of several of the Little Valley Burn plan’s elements to “high" would have made the project a Type 1 burn. This means that officials overseeing the burn would have needed higher qualifications.

Prescribed burns are rated based on their complexity: low, moderate or high. Depending on the overall rating, a burn boss with the requisite qualifications is assigned to the project. A Type 2 burn boss, for example, can oversee burns of low or moderate complexity but not projects with a "high" rating, which requires a Type 1 burn boss. A Type 3 boss can only lead burns of low complexity.

The Little Valley Burn's prescription plan rated the project as a "moderate" burn overall based on risk, consequences and technical difficulty. This made it a Type 2 burn, Patton said. Burn boss Phillips and technical reviewer Powning had Type 2 burn boss designations, according to the prescribed burn plan for Little Valley.

This meant NLTFPD’s Powning was certified to do the technical review and NDF’s Phillips was qualified to oversee the Little Valley Burn based on the prescription plan’s Type 2 rating. Both would not have been qualified for the same role on a Type 1 burn.

Size and scope were not the only issues that critics had with the escaped burn.

The timing of the Little Valley Burn was also questioned by fire victims, particularly for an area that is known for getting wind gusts.

“What was the rush?” lawyer Houston said. “For whatever reason, people were rushing to get this (burn) done without much regard to what the potential consequences may be.”

One question Houston raised was whether research or grant money and funding requirements played a role in the timing of the burn. According to NDF, however, the $89,600 Hazardous Fuels Reduction grant from the U.S. Forest Service that was used for the Little Valley Burn does not expire until May 31, 2020.

Others also questioned any potential role the University of Nevada, Reno may have played in the timing, whether it be for its own research funding obligations or ongoing interest in acquiring more land in Little Valley. On NDF's online page for the Little Valley Burn project, the agency said it was cooperating with the university in the burn. The Little Valley Burn plan also described the endeavor as a "planned coordinated project" with the university, adding that "long-term planning has been implemented to meet the needs of UNR."

The university’s Whittell Forest and Wildlife Area comprises 2,650 acres, most of which is in Little Valley. The property was donated to UNR in 1959 by George Whittell and has been used as a research and teaching facility for students akin to an outdoor classroom, according to the university.

As part of its interests in the area, the university has a conflicting bid with the Incline Village General Improvement District and Diamond Peak Ski Resort to acquire several hundred acres east of the Carson Range ridgeline by Little Valley. A Sept. 29 letter to Washoe County from UNR President Marc Johnson that was acquired by the Gazette-Journal showed university opposition to efforts by Diamond Peak Ski Resort to acquire about 480 acres of federal land in Little Valley, which overlaps with 760 acres that the university wants to acquire as well.

“If this land exchange (with Diamond Peak Ski Resort) occurs, there may be ski slopes in Little Valley, coming right up to the western boundary of the University’s property,” Johnson wrote. “This proposed land transfer with its ensuing development constitutes a major threat to the University’s interests in Little Valley.”

Download the UNR letter here.

In making the university's case for the land transfer that it is seeking, Johnson’s letter pointed to UNR’s stewardship of the Whittell Forest over the years, including reducing fuels with the help of NDF — over 300 acres in the last decade. Johnson also mentioned the Little Valley Burn, which was only a few days away from starting at the time, in demonstrating the good that UNR does on property it owns in the area and why it would be a more suitable candidate for the land transfer.

UNR says that it had no role in the decisions surrounding the Little Valley Burn, including its timing. Instead, the university says it was invited by NDF to take part in the burn for research after the decision was already made to do forest management, said Jane Tors, UNR research communications director.

“Research was not the driving factor, it was the opposite,” Tors said. “The plan for the prescribed burn reopened the opportunity to do research.”

In describing UNR's role, NDF mentioned some key issues with the burn due to the partnership with the university.

"Planned research projects to study the burn create additional complexity," the plan stated. "Neither agency has worked together on a project of this scope and size before, so careful coordination with UNR is required."

Tors referred queries about the research to the Desert Research Institute, which took the lead for the study done during the Little Valley Burn. Adam Watts, associate research professor at DRI, confirmed Tors’ statement that they were invited by NDF to participate in the burn for research.

According to Watts, DRI was looking at the effect of fire on insect populations and tree mortality. The funding also was internally procured and not subject to any timelines or deadlines for use, Watts said.

“It was a shoestring kind of project … and we scraped together time and resources to produce some meaningful results,” Watts said. “They were just resources we had available to use.”

Researchers have stayed clear of the site following the escaped burn. Watts says he hopes the incident does not take away from the importance of prescribed burns. Part of the research was to look at not just the impact of the burns but how to do them better, he said.

“I empathize with the tragic nature of the wildfire,” Watts said. “It destroyed people’s homes so that’s obviously the greatest tragedy.

“I hope that despite this tragedy, it does not have a negative impact on the important work being done by NDF and other agencies on prescribed burns.”

Victims of the fire, however, made a distinction between a well-executed burn and a bad one. One aspect of the burn that has been questioned by its critics involved weather, especially given the area's susceptibility to wind gusts.

In its daily updates during the burn, NDF says it ended the burn early on Oct. 7 with 201 acres burned. Burning the remaining 41 acres was postponed until the following fall. The reason cited for stopping the burn involved changes in predicted weather patterns, with concerns raised about the potential health impact of lingering smoke being pulled down the valley floor by insufficient wind. It did not mention weather, however, as a potential hazard for an escaped burn.

In its final daily update on Wednesday, Oct. 12, NDF said its crews would patrol the area in the coming weeks but did not mention forecasts for strong winds in the coming days. Sufficient notice was provided by the National Weather Service in Reno about winds picking up on late Thursday, Oct. 13 and early Friday, Oct. 14, starting with a “heads-up” email to all its partners on Oct. 8. The warning was reiterated in forecasts for the Little Valley Burn area from Oct. 12 to 14 about “strong winds” occurring at the time that the fire eventually started.

Download the spot weather report for Little Valley here.

NDF’s own prescribed burn plan also warned about serious consequences for an escaped burn. Although the plan rated potential consequences and technical difficulty for the burn as “moderate” overall, both were rated as “high” in case of a potential escape.

The lack of adequate personnel to monitor the burn site despite the wind warnings and NDF’s own prescription remain a sore spot for many of the victims. Lawyer Houston says his clients feel betrayed.

“Why were promises made and not kept and what was the reason they were not kept, as far as pulling off people (from the site)?” Houston said. “There’s a reason it’s called a controlled burn.

“If it’s not controlled, it’s called a forest fire or wildfire.”

The response of Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District leadership during the early stages of the fire also raised questions about the speed of the overall response based on 911 records.

Transcripts for the 911 dispatch acquired by the RGJ for the early morning hours of Oct. 14 showed that the first call about smoke at the Little Valley Burn site at 1:23 a.m. was deemed “unfounded” and a responding fire engine quickly returned to the station.

Charlie Moore, TMFPD fire chief, declined to talk about the incident, citing the pending independent review. A note from the dispatch transcript, however, showed that the call was dismissed because the smoke was considered to be just a byproduct of the Little Valley controlled burn.

It wasn’t until a second call came in 12 minutes later at 1:35 a.m. indicating that the smoke had an orange glow that the incident was taken more seriously.

Download the 911 transcript here.

The initial response included one battalion chief, three brush trucks and one training vehicle. One brush truck from Station 16 on East Washoe Lake, however, blew a radiator hose mid-slope. The 911 transcript did not indicate that a fire engine, which holds more water than a brush truck, was part of the early response. The Little Valley Burn's own prescription plan from NDF, however, noted difficulties in accessing the burn site should the fire escape, including for fire engines, as one of several technical challenges for putting together a response.

"Access for suppression resources would be more difficult by working on steep slopes with no access for engines," the plan indicated. "If contingency resources are needed, this would also add to the difficulty, due to unfamiliarity of the area and being non-NDF resources."

By the time 911 transcripts placed the initial vehicles — which included brush trucks from Station 39 in Galena Forest and Station 30 at Bowers Mansion — on the scene at the main fire area around 2:50 a.m, more than an hour had passed since the second 911 call came in. At that point the fire had grown to at least 5 acres. Prior to arriving at the main area, crews reported running into spot fires along the way at 2:25 a.m. but those were described as "not terribly active."

Regan of North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District, which joined in later to help with evacuations, says the condition of the road leading to the site was likely a factor in the slower response. Regan says that it took him more than 30 minutes to drive up through the area. He wasn’t sure what route the first responders took, however, Regan said.

The 911 transcript also did not indicate if an initial attack was performed on the fire to try and contain it. Although TMFPD's Moore declined to comment on his agency's initial response due to the ongoing review, he confirmed to the Washoe County Board of Fire Commissioners during an Oct. 18 public meeting that initial responders were unable to deal with the fire with the equipment they had at the time.

"There was really nothing we could do with those 5 acres with the resources that we had there," Moore said to the commission. "It grew quickly from 5 acres to 55 acres and then we knew we were off to the races at that point."

Firefighting crews were also likely stretched thin because of several fires occurring in the area within a 24-hour period, including one at Rolling Hills on Mount Rose and another in the Lake Tahoe area near Fallen Leaf Lake. One email from a fire helicopter supervisor to NDF mentioned that the Tahoe fire was “competing for resources.”

Another earlier incident, the Clear Creek fire in Carson City, should not have been a big factor because it wrapped up before the Little Valley Fire started, Regan said.

Transcripts also showed that TMFPD did not request mutual aid from Reno and Sparks until 3:26 a.m. The initial request did not indicate that the additional equipment was needed immediately but “(possibly) at daybreak.”

TMFPD Fire Chief Moore stressed that TMFPD was not the lead agency for the Little Valley Fire, which he says started on state property.

"TMFPD is really a supporting mutual aid agency to NDF at this fire," Moore told the Gazette-Journal. "It's important to know that many mutual aid partners were there and we were just one of them."

Meanwhile, an email to NDF on Friday morning, Oct. 14, detailing the names of support crews either on the way or already on the scene from the agency’s conservation camps said that “due to leave and staffing (Eastern Sierra Conservation Camp and Humboldt Conservation Camp) will not be able to fill any more crews” in addition to those already listed. NDF's conservation camps are staffed by crews that typically work on forest management as well as wildfire prevention and suppression. In response to questions about staffing, NDF says that the agency always makes sure to take proper staffing levels into account when scheduling time off.

Victims of the fire focused their ire on the leadership of the agencies involved.

“The firefighters on the ground, those poor guys were doing everything they possibly could once the fire raged out of control,” Houston said. “The problem is they had a chain of command that made them so ineffective, and that’s totally against what these firefighters stand for.”

The concern among victims now is what potential impact Nevada’s cap and limits on damages for incidents such as escaped burns would have on their attempts to seek redress for their losses. In addition to damage to physical property, there are other compounding factors such as property depreciation as well as emotional losses that can’t be easily quantified.

Nevada law, specifically Nevada Revised Statute 41.035, limits damage awards against state officials or employees related to their job to $100,000. A separate law, NRS 527.126, also provides immunity to the government from damage due to a prescribed burn "unless the fire was conducted in a grossly negligent manner." A Gazette-Journal analysis found that the average value of the homes destroyed in the fire was $1.4 million with total damages potentially exceeding $80 million.

“The property owners are not at fault,” Houston said. “They had nothing to do with causing this calamity but if the state allows the immunity cap, that would certainly be leaving the bag on their doorstep and that, to me, is remarkably unfair.”

Azevedo considers himself lucky for only losing trees and not his home. In addition to the latest fire, Azevedo also witnessed the previous Little Valley fire in the 1980s that burned his family’s ranch when he was still a child. The image of the towering flames and horrific damage caused by both incidents is burned deeply into his memory.

“A hundred trees on the grand scheme of things is not a big deal — (the fire) could have taken everything we own,” said Azevedo, who remains a supporter of controlled burns. “Until you’ve been involved in it, you really can’t comprehend it.”

Ryan Sheltra says it pains him to see his mother continue to be devastated by the loss of the Sheltra family home. What makes it worse is that the Little Valley Fire was a disaster that could have been prevented, Sheltra said.

“My mother is almost 69 (and) still pretty emotional on the loss of her home,” Sheltra said. “The Little Valley Fire was not intentional, nor was it an accident — this fire was the direct result of negligence and broken assurances from the leadership at the Nevada Division of Forestry.

“NDF leadership has totally failed us.”