The Little Valley Fire destroyed 23 homes in October, leaving affected residents to consider whether to rebuild or relocate.
Reno Public Radio’s Noah Glick reports.
Driver’s licenses, birth certificates and prescription medications are just some of the tangible items people lost while escaping October’s Little Valley Fire, along with a sense of safety.
“We still get periodic phone calls about somebody that’s just experienced some post-traumatic stress, and so we have some clinicians that we will have deploy to the area just to talk with people and process it.”
That’s Jeanne Marsh with the Washoe County Department of Social Services. She says her team helped residents in the immediate aftermath recover important items, as well as connect people to mental health services and provide gift cards for clothes and toiletries.
And even though there’s still a lot of work to be done, she says…
“It appears that people are moving on and they are just going on with their lives and getting this put back and re-established.”
A preliminary report in late October showed a prescribed burn in Washoe Valley to be the cause of the fire.
A full, independent review on that prescribed fire has been ordered, and officials say that will be released mid-February.