Mount Charleston healing from Hilary; no timeline on restoring roads

There is no firm timeline yet on when Mount Charleston will be able return to relative normalcy after Sunday’s flooding from Tropical Storm Hilary caused extensive road damage and took out electricity and water service, officials said Tuesday.

“The people in the valley were all ready for a big event and that didn’t really materialize, but that’s not the case with what happened up here on Mount Charleston,” said Clark County Commission Chairman James Gibson.

In a press conference Tuesday, where officials from various agencies gave an update on the ongoing efforts to get everything back to working order, Gibson said crews are “working feverishly” to get make sure the power is back on, water is running and available, and access via the roads on the mountain is restored.

The storm, which dropped 8 inches of rain on Kyle and Lee canyons, caused no reported injuries or deaths, and nobody was trapped as of Tuesday, said Assistant Chief Jason Douglas of the Mount Charleston Fire Protection District, who said 51 people were evacuated from the mountain.

“The water that was running over the roadways has significantly decreased,” said Assistant Fire Chief Brian O’Neal of the Clark County Fire Department.

Road damage

But there was still significant road damage. The closures of state routes 157, 156 and 158 will remain tentatively in effect until Friday evening, at which point officials will then reassess if anything needs to change, officials said.

The top priority is to get a temporary lane open for travel on the heavily damaged state Route 157, also known as Kyle Canyon Road, said Justin Hopkins, Nevada Department of Transportation spokesperson.

The temporary lane, once opened, won’t be open to everybody, but just Mount Charleston residents and first responders, Hopkins said.

“As you’ve probably seen from the pictures and video and social media, there’s significant damage to a section of Kyle Canyon Road, probably more than a mile’s worth of road,” Hopkins said.

Workers were also assessing damage to state routes 156 and 158, he said. About 30 places have shoulder erosion on Mount Charleston roads, equal to roughly about 11 miles worth of erosion, Hopkins said.

Work to repair those roads is ongoing.

“We hope to open as many of those roads as possible within the coming days, but I don’t have a timeline for all of that construction at this time,” Hopkins said.

Water problems

Water was also being delivered to the residents who didn’t have running water. A boil water was still in effect and will be in effect for the coming days, said Corey Enus, of the Las Vegas Valley Water District. Six hundred gallon bottles of water were delivered Monday, while 800 were delivered Tuesday, Enus said.

More water will be delivered in the coming days.

“One of the most requested items that we have received so far is for water, so we will be increasing our distribution of water into the communities,” O’Neal said.

As for electricity, an NV Energy official said workers were working on getting the power back on in the Rainbow subdivision, and they were expecting that to happen by Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

Workers will then work on restoring power to the Old Town subdivision, where there is much more debris, and the Echo subdivision, said Shannon Gregory, NV Energy’s director of operations.

Gregory said NV Energy doesn’t have a total count of households and other structures without power, but he said roughly 400 electrical meters were still affected Tuesday afternoon.

Mount Charleston also won’t be open to hiking or recreation for the foreseeable future as the repair work continues, said Taylor Tims, acting recreation staff officer for the U.S. Forest Service.

“We don’t have a timeline of when were actually going to be back open to the recreating public,” Tims said.

Clark County Manager Kevin Schiller also said ongoing updates will come in the days ahead.

Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com