Gale and Chris Scott, residents of Bakersfield, Calif., shop the week before the Fourth of July 2004 at Phantom Fireworks in Pahrump, which has three companies that sell and store fireworks. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Henderson's industrial plants, which handle large amounts of hazardous substances, are visible from U.S. Highway 95. The district started up in World War II to support the war effort. Photo by John Gurzinski.

In the spirit of Sunshine Week, a yearly event to promote open government through open records and open meetings, the Las Vegas Review-Journal conducted its own audit of seven local governments in Southern Nevada.

The goal was to get a copy from each of its emergency operations plan, a document that details how officials will handle emergencies ranging from flash floods to earthquakes to plane crashes to explosions and beyond.

The plan covers more kinds of emergencies than the hazardous materials plan requested in a national Sunshine Week audit.

The result? A split decision as to whether the desired document is a public record for all to view.

Of the seven local governments audited, two denied access to the plan entirely.

"Public records law in Nevada is not easily interpreted," said Ed Irvin, the lawyer in the Nevada attorney general's office who is the deputy for public records. "A reasonable person could become quite confused."

Asked about the audit results, Irvin declined to say whether a Nevada community's emergency operations plan is an open record or not. A formal opinion from the attorney general would be the proper way to make such a characterization, he added.

The two holdouts were the cities of North Las Vegas and Mesquite. Both cited state law as their reason for denying access to the report.

The governments that shared their plans in whole were Clark County, Henderson and Pahrump, a bedroom community in Nye County. Many Pahrump residents commute to the Las Vegas Valley for work.

Las Vegas shared its emergency operations plan in part, withholding a portion that contained private phone numbers of emergency personnel and a portion dealing with terrorism.

Boulder City was willing to share its plan, according to Fire Chief Dean Molburg, who also heads the city's emergency management office. But it issued the plan on a faulty CD.

The newspaper's deadline elapsed before Boulder City could provide a new disc.

The plans contain procedures for handling emergencies. Communities can describe their unique hazards.

To conduct its audit, the Review-Journal sent out three of its reporters, a Pahrump Valley Times reporter and two members of the League of Women Voters of Las Vegas Valley.

They were instructed to request the document in person, identifying themselves only as private citizens.

Each auditor took notes later on such factors as whether they had to give their names, make the request in writing, explain their reason for wanting the report, pay for a copy or wait for the government employee to consult supervisors before releasing a copy.

After the audit was over, the newspaper contacted the governments to give them an opportunity to comment on the anonymous audit.

It took 10 minutes to obtain the Henderson plan, which was updated in 2006.

It took Las Vegas 13 days to respond by supplying a redacted copy, in which sections on terrorism and personal phone numbers of personnel had been eliminated.

Several jurisdictions required the auditor to put the request in writing.

The results might have varied because Nevada law does not clearly define what a public record is, though state law does contain numerous scattered references in which specific types of documents are declared confidential.

The emergency operations plans, sometimes called all-hazard plans, that were the subject of this localized audit differ from the Hazardous Materials Emergency Response plans that were sought as part of a recent national audit by journalists.

A 1986 federal law makes the hazardous materials emergency plans public. In Nevada, those plans are generated by a committee in each Nevada county.

The hazmat plans fit within the framework of the emergency operations plans, which deal with other sorts of emergencies. Nevada has only 17 hazardous materials plans, one for each county, and all subdivisions in that county.

But numerous cities and towns in Nevada have their own general emergency plans. No federal law makes those plans public records.

North Las Vegas cited a state statute adopted after Sept. 11, 2001, as the rationale for withholding its plan. The law declares emergency response plans confidential.

"I don't know why they chose to give portions of (their plans) over," Carie Torrence, city attorney of North Las Vegas, said when she learned what some other cities had done.

State Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, has proposed a bill to streamline access to public records in Nevada. His measure would give government agencies in Nevada two days to provide either a requested record or a written explanation for not releasing it.

If an agency could edit out confidential portions of a record, it would have to release the rest.

When a confidential record turns 10 years old, the bill would allow a person to go to court to get an order for access to that record.

A brief review of the emergency operations plans obtained locally suggests the most likely scenario for a chemical spill or release involves a traffic accident, especially in the case of smaller communities without much resident industry.

Nye County as a whole worries about the traffic generated by mining, according to Brent Jones, director of emergency management. Trucks loaded with dangerous cyanide routinely visit the Round Mountain gold mine.

Pahrump, which lies in Nye County, worries about highway traffic passing through its central commercial district, which has grown around the junction between state highways 160 and 372.

The report also mentions a concern about three Pahrump companies that store and sell fireworks.

David Richards, Pahrump town manager, said its next plan will incorporate new concerns about interruption of its communications and electric networks.

"Our electrical grid has suffered from vandalism, and our valley has been blacked out for the better part of a day," Richards noted.

Molburg says Boulder City residents worry about the return of truck traffic to their city when the Hoover Dam bypass bridge opens.

Ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, truck traffic has been routed through Searchlight to avoid crossing the dam.

Residents regularly inquire about the city's emergency plans, which Molburg attributes to the city's high percentage of educated retirees, many of whom have worked for government or the military.

Henderson contains the largest industrial complex in the Las Vegas Valley, on Lake Mead Parkway, although in recent years, Pacific Engineering Production Co. of Nevada (PEPCON) has left the factory row.

Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. stopped producing a rocket-fuel component there, then spun off some of its manufacturing into Tronox Inc., a new and separate company that now occupies the site to make a white pigment.

A prominent hazard in the northern end of the Las Vegas Valley is the tank farm at the local terminal of a California-Nevada petroleum pipeline that supplies fuel to McCarran International Airport and other local users.

The terminal operator, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, tries to keep a low profile by not listing the site's name, address or telephone number in the local phone directory, said Emily Mir Thompson, a California spokeswoman.