October’s Little Valley Fire destroyed 23 homes and burned more than 2,200 twenty-two-hundred acres across Washoe Valley.
As Reno Public Radio’s Noah Glick reports, local officials are now working to rehabilitate the charred landscape.
Following the blaze, a response team assessed additional hazards, including damaged trees and erosion.
Cheryl Surface is with Washoe County and led that effort.
“Once you lose vegetation from hillsides, particularly when they’re fairly steep, you get a lot of erosion," she says. "There’s ditches out there that are used to water cattle and those were plugged by sediment flow and soil from the upper hillside.”
Surface says crews from Washoe County have already implemented erosion control features along J S Bar Ranch Road and Old Ranch Road, while the Nevada Department of Transportation has a plan for managing the waterways underneath Franktown Road.
She says all affected property owners have been given individual land assessments, including tree management and fire mitigation recommendations. Work on re-seeding and re-planting native vegetation will begin in late winter.
