On the first night of the fire, as ash was raining from the sky, search and rescue volunteers knocked on Meghan Archambault’s door.
Archambault’s house, which is near Evans Canyon on Peavine Mountain, wasn’t in a mandatory evacuation zone. But the fire was moving fast, so the volunteers were urging residents to leave early. In a conversation recorded by Archambault’s doorbell camera, one of them told Archambault’s partner about the chaotic evacuation of the North Valleys.
“Earlier today it jumped North Virginia Street, it jumped 395,” she said. “And those residents were stuck in their own roads, trying to leave.”
Archambault, who uses they-them pronouns, hesitated at first, but ultimately decided to leave. Their partner and 74-year-old mother came, too. But when they got to the first evacuation shelter authorities set up at Evelyn Mount Northeast Community Center, they learned it was already full.
So all three spent the night at The Generator in Sparks, where Archambault has an art studio.
Archambault and their family are lucky. Their house was untouched, and everyone’s okay — even the two old cats who decided to hide rather than be stuffed into crates. But like many evacuees, Archambault feels officials didn’t communicate clearly enough during the disaster.
“It's almost like we had way too much irrelevant information and not enough actual, concrete information,” they said.
In one case, that lack of information had deadly consequences.
Long before Archambault evacuated, the fire had already destroyed multiple North Valleys homes, including the trailer Francisco Lopez shared with his girlfriend and her elderly aunt, Hayde Medina Valiente.
But according to Lopez’s son, Juan Lopez, they never got an evacuation notice.
“He told me that they didn’t receive anything at all,” he said.
All three were badly burned, and Valiente later died.
In the days after the evacuation, residents were desperate to know if their homes were still standing and what had become of their friends and relatives. But detailed information was hard to find, so many of them turned to unofficial sources like the Reno/Sparks/775 Driver Shaming Facebook page.
In a video from Monday, Aug. 24, the page’s moderator gave an update on the neighborhood around Anchor Point Drive, north of U.S. 395.
“These are new builds, and everything is safe. Right across the way from the Amazon warehouse, you can kinda see it there,” he said.
The page normally shares user-submitted clips of local motorists behaving badly. But its moderator said, after he got evacuated from his home in the Red Rock area, he started driving into the evacuation zone to check on people’s houses.
He knew it was dangerous, but his anxiety got the best of him. Later that day, he spoke to KUNR on the phone from Lemmon Valley.
“As of this morning, I see a couple spot fires. The smoke and ash is a lot better,” he said.
We aren’t naming the moderator, because he said he’s received threats from angry drivers who’ve been featured on his page.
Public officials also relied on social media, by livestreaming briefings and posting updates on Facebook. And they used an online portal called Emergency Washoe to share official information from multiple sources.
Washoe County Communications Manager Bethany Drysdale understands why people were impatient for news. But she said it takes time to get accurate information from the field.
“We've all played the game of telephone when we were little. We all know how easily a message can get confused by going through the wrong channels,” she said.
Experts say climate change is making extreme fire behavior more likely, even as communities like Reno sprawl into fire-prone areas.
Archambault said officials need to get better at communicating with the public, not just during an emergency, but before one happens. And they believe the region will need better infrastructure, to keep people safe.
“We have all of these apartment buildings going up in the North Valleys. But do we have the roads to support that? Clearly not,” they said.
