The Blue Cut fire has scorched more than 37,000 acres so far. Satellite imagery captured Thursday shows the extent of the burn area. This "false color" image from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite uses a combination of color and infrared bands to help distinguish burn scars and hotspots from vegetation.
Matt Hamilton
Los Angeles Times
One casualty of the raging wildfire in San Bernardino County: the Summit Inn, a popular roadside diner at the crest of historic Route 66.
Flames from the Blue Cut fire tore through the historic inn on Tuesday, according to video footage of the inferno.
After opening in 1952 [sic], the diner -- outfitted with red leather booths and walls adorned with memorabilia -- became a familiar spot for those traveling to and from the High Desert.
The Summit Inn, which recently changed ownership, had touted its celebrity clientele, including Pierce Brosnan, Clint Eastwood and Elvis Presley.
In 2014, a drunk driver slammed into the restaurant and plowed into the kitchen, causing an estimated $50,000 worth of damage, the Daily Press reported.
Firefighters tightened their grip on the fast-moving Blue Cut fire overnight Friday, capitalizing on humid weather conditions to gain greater control over the 37,020-acre blaze, authorities said Saturday.
The fire, which is 68% contained, has destroyed 105 homes and 213 other structures in San Bernardino County since it broke out Tuesday for reasons investigators are still trying to determine.
The tally for California’s harsh fire season ascended to even grimmer terrain Saturday as officials announced that the Blue Cut fire in the Cajon Pass has destroyed 105 homes and 213 other structures.
As of Saturday night, the Blue Cut fire had burned 37,020 acres near the 15 Freeway in Cajon Pass and was 73% contained.
Wild, feral, and menacing cattle of the McCullough Range near Searchlight, NV.
By Henry Brean and David Becker
Las Vegas Review-Journal
The wild remnants of one of southern Clark County's last cattle herds are now being cleared from the mountains between Henderson and Searchlight, but the work so far has not gone smoothly.
A crew of cowboys from Utah is gathering stray and feral cows from the McCullough Mountains under a contract with the Nevada Department of Agriculture.
Flint Wright, animal industry administrator for the department, said the operation started Friday and has no scheduled completion date. As of Monday, just 17 cows had been collected.
"They're essentially wild cattle, and it's going to take some time," Wright said.
The roundup hit a major snag Sunday, when a helicopter being used to find and chase cows crashed just off state Route 164 west of Searchlight.
On Tuesday, the wrecked helicopter and its pilot could still be found at a motel in the town 60 miles south of Las Vegas.
Richard Dick of Hutchinson, Kan., said he was hovering about 12 feet off the ground, trying to move a pair of stubborn bulls, when a gust of wind pushed his helicopter into a Joshua tree. The 1962-vintage Bell model 47G ended up on its side in pieces, but he walked away with bumps and bruises.
The pilot said it was his first domestic accident in 17,000 hours of flying, though he crashed three times in Vietnam.
When he climbed out the wreckage Sunday, Dick said, the bulls were just staring at him.
The cattle now being rounded up have roamed the range untended since 2006, when rancher Cal Baird relinquished his federal grazing permit and sold his water rights to the county to preserve habitat for the desert tortoise and other federally protected species.
According to the Bureau of Land Management, Baird moved most of his livestock from the 111,000-acre federal grazing allotment to Arizona, but a few stragglers were left behind.
For the past several years, officials say, those survivors and their unbranded descendants have been damaging springs and menacing people in the mountains and desert between Interstate 15 and U.S. Highway 95 south of the Las Vegas Valley.
BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said the animals are aggressive and "present a danger to the public recreating in the area."
Wright said: "We've had some complaints from people who were hunting deer and were run off by the cattle."
Baird could not be reached for comment.
Under Nevada law, unbranded stray or feral livestock are considered state property. The BLM has been asking the state to remove the unclaimed cattle from the McCullough Range for several years.
In 2013, the state rounded up and sold off approximately 30 animals, but an unknown number remain. Last year, the BLM counted about 40 unbranded cows spread across two wilderness areas west of Searchlight. Wright guessed there could 100 to 200 feral cows still out there.
He figures it would cost the state as much as $200,000 to try to collect that many animals. The Department of Agriculture has been "trying to get this deal cleaned up for a number of years," but it never seems to have the money or the resources, he said.
The animals are now being rounded up by Sun J Livestock, a ranching operation from Vernal, Utah. Wright said the ranchers aren't being paid directly, but they have plenty of incentive to do a thorough job.
"They get to keep the livestock," he said. "They'll get every cow they can."
A bulldozer works on a flood-ravaged portion of Interstate 15 near Moapa, Nev. (John Locher / Associated Press)
By JOHN M. GLIONNA
Los Angeles Times
LAS VEGAS -- Mother Nature works in confounding ways: snow flurries in Phoenix, a balmy Christmas in Buffalo, and this week's catastrophic flood in the normally parched desert 50 miles north of this resort city.
In what some term the area's worst storm in decades, a 2-mile-long stretch of Interstate 15 in rural Moapa was destroyed by 4 inches of rain that lashed the roadway in just an hour on Monday. The dying throes of Tropical Storm Norbert dumped as much rain on the area in 60 minutes as Las Vegas gets in a year.
The mother of all road detours has come for thousands of vacationers, sightseers and long-distance truckers, including delays of eight hours or more, with vehicles diverted onto a gantlet of winding two-lane roads that squiggle into the cacti and scrub brush.
The roundabout has resulted in millions of dollars in losses for regional trucking companies and their customers. Drivers on already tight schedules — and with legal limits on how long they can spend on the road — have thrown up their hands.
"The worst backup I've seen in 25 years as a long-distance trucker," said Ken Leth, 58, a driver for Las Vegas-based Truline Corp. trucking company who says he has clocked 3 million road miles. "You couldn't get up and running. It was 20 miles an hour most of the way."
For customers, waits of up to 36 hours for deliveries have meant that hospitals have run out of clean linens for patients and rural gas stations have run out of fuel.
"It's been tough," said Paul Enos, chief executive of the Nevada Trucking Assn., which represents 530 companies. "Some people are getting desperate."
In Nevada, 94% of all manufactured goods are delivered by truck — versus 69% nationally, he said. Much of that cargo travels along I-15, a commercial artery that in the damaged area handles 25,500 vehicles per day.
"We've been trying to get hours-of-service exemption so guys can wait out the delays and stay on the road," he said. "There are just so many towns out there that depend on trucks."
Since the storm hit, I-15 has been closed in both directions, and state transportation crews have worked around the clock to repair the damage. Officials planned to open one lane in either direction by late Friday, but even if that happens, traffic will be restricted to cars and light trucks.
That means for at least another week, 18-wheelers will have to continue on a circuitous route through two states.
Leth and others consulted their trucker's atlas for this time-killer: His northbound semi was waved off I-15 onto U.S. Highway 93, through tiny Alamo and Caliente to the town of Panaca. Then he headed east on State Route 319, which becomes Utah Route 56, and connected back onto I-15 in Cedar City, Utah.
That's 225 miles on narrow two-lane roads, versus 150 miles on the interstate.
For Leth, who was hauling dairy products to Denver, the detour took more than eight hours to cover ground that would have taken three hours on I-15: "I was a captive audience — all I could do is sit in traffic."
For a time, all traffic was diverted onto this route. Now cars and trucks travel east from the interstate through Valley of Fire State Park — with highly reduced speed limits — and back on the highway 40 miles and several traffic-congested hours later, just 18 miles from where they started.
From his check-in desk, Nolan Avery, owner of the 40-room Shady Hotel in Caliente, has watched the slow-moving Nevada version of "Carmageddon."
"Oh my gosh, that first day was just a nightmare, with bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks. At one point it took two hours to get five miles," he said. "People were irate, just stuck in their vehicles. Trucks broke down, which made things worse."
The last few days have gotten better, Avery said. "Now it's nothing but trucks. One rumbles past here just about every 10 seconds."
Frustrated motorists have veered off the detour route — including the tour bus operator who abandoned a trip to Zion National Park in southern Utah for one to nearby Death Valley. His reason: You just couldn't get there from here, not in any timely way.
"We're getting lots of tour buses in here," said Vivien Rudzena, manager of the Horizon Market in Pahrump. "The line to our bathroom goes around the corner. I tell people to drink plenty of water. It's a desert out there."
Some are calling this week's downpour southern Nevada's 100-year storm, but transportation officials say that's an understatement.
"Our system is equipped to handle those 'worst-in-100-years' storms, but this was much worse than that," said Mario Gomez, an assistant engineer with the Nevada Department of Transportation.
He said the drainage system, designed to handle a river of water 200 feet wide and 20 feet deep, overflowed, sending 2 feet of water onto the roadway, toppling cars and ripping up the roadway. "The sheer force of the water scours the road. It rips and tears everything in its path."
Gomez arrived at the gutted stretch of highway to see sheer devastation. "The road was just gone in places," he said. "I've never seen as severe a force of nature in my life, and I've got a new respect."
Enos said truckers were preparing for the long and hard road ahead. Drivers were teaming up to outlast the delays and some were avoiding Nevada entirely. Still, the delays are taking their toll.
"You figure that it costs about $80 an hour to run a long-distance truck, with salary and fuel," he said. "So you get long delays like this and multiply the losses by tens of thousands of trucks, and the losses start to add up real fast."
Gomez said the big trucks would be kept off the interstate until all four lanes reopen because there are several hilly stretches that would cause long lines behind lumbering 18-wheelers in low gear.
"We know I-15 is a commercial lifeline to Utah, California and the rest of the country," he said. "So it's extremely important to get things open as soon as possible. I feel horrible for those truckers. But we're working as fast as we can."
But where there is economic famine there is also feast. Shady Motel owner Avery says business has been good. "For a small town like ours, something like this is a financial boost, if only for a few short weeks."
Mr. Freeman and his wife, Roxanne Lang, reopened the town’s store and cafe, and restored the hotel, room by room, creating a destination for bikers, hikers, miners and tourists. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)
By DIANE CARDWELL
New York Times
NIPTON, Calif. — Gerald Freeman leaned on a walking stick on a dusty hill near the four rows of his solar arrays, talking about it like an apostle on a mission. Down the road are the eucalyptus trees he planted as a potential source of biomass. And not far away, he said, he hopes to install a hydrogen system, another source of renewable fuel.
It’s all part of Mr. Freeman’s unlikely dream here in the Mojave Desert — to turn this tiny town into a community running on clean power entirely of its own making.
The dream began in earnest about 30 years ago, when Mr. Freeman, a gold miner living in Malibu, bought this ghost town — hotel and general store included. He still has a ways to go, but Nipton now produces roughly half the electricity for its fluctuating population of 30 to 70 residents from the array Mr. Freeman installed in 2010.
“The more independent we can become of outside resources, the better,” Mr. Freeman said, citing the rising cost of utility power, frequent outages and preserving the environment as motivation. “I’ve been conscious of the global warming issue since my early days in school. It’s only now beginning to be so much part of the present day. People are slow to adapt to an oncoming reality.”
For decades, people have experimented with self-reliant living, whether hippies flocking to communes in the hills or survivalists hunkering down across the plains. But not since Henry David Thoreau took off into the woods near Walden Pond has the idea of going off the grid seemed so within reach — albeit this time without sacrificing the modern conveniences.
With cheaper and more widely available ways to make power at home or in town, individuals and communities have been moving ever closer to declaring their energy independence, using technologies like solar, batteries and even small-scale wind. In recent years, towns dedicated to environmental sustainability while reducing the reliance on fossil fuels — known as transition towns — have sprung up in Europe, Australia and the Americas.
Still, it is not yet easy to unplug from the power system, as Mr. Freeman’s journey — which he may not get to complete because of flagging health — illustrates.
Mr. Freeman, 81, first got to know the place — not much more than a few buildings plopped behind the railroad tracks like a movie set — back in the 1950s. With a degree in geology from the California Institute of Technology, he would come from Los Angeles to prospect for gold, spending days climbing and sampling the rocks on his own. He eventually established a successful mine and moved to Malibu with his second wife, Roxanne Lang, now 63, whom he had met on a dive boat off Catalina and wooed with the opening line, “Can I help you with your wet-suit?” she recalled.
But Malibu became expensive and was far from the mining operations he oversaw. So when Nipton came up for sale, he bought it, moving there with Ms. Lang in 1984.
The town offered tremendous natural resources in the form of a Pleistocene-era underground lake whose waters flow there first and strong, year-round sunshine barely trespassed by clouds. It also had a rich history, bustling from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries along with the mining industry, and even boasting a hotel that played host to the silent-movie star Clara Bow, who owned a ranch nearby.
But by the time the couple moved there, it was all but empty and in disrepair. They stayed for six years, until their son outgrew the one-room schoolhouse that serves the area, and then moved to Henderson, Nev., a Las Vegas suburb.
In that time, they reopened the store and cafe and restored the hotel room by room, creating a destination for bikers, hikers, miners and tourists, especially Europeans, looking for the flavor of the Old West.
Michael Truman, for instance, usually escapes the cold of Medicine Hat, in Alberta, Canada, to come to the area from November to March. He had never been to Nipton before, but took a different road looking for places to travel with the dog he was planning to look after for friends and stumbled upon it.
“It looked cool, so I said, ‘I’m going there,’ ” he said, adding that he would probably bring the dog back for a day in the preserve bordering the town. “I like plants and animals more than people — they’re easier to get along with.”
It has also attracted a cluster of about 10 full-time residents who work in Nipton, some who say they were attracted by its peace and solitude.
The couple running the cafe, Susan and Fernando Gamez, have begun growing some of the vegetables they use for offerings like the If Looks Could Kale burger, using an intensive vertical system intended to save on space, energy and water.
“The whole area is more and more into how do we use our environment,” said a woman behind the cash register who gave her name as Brenda M. “Let’s not trash it; what can we do with it?”
For Mr. Freeman, those questions were there all along. He had begun experimenting even before he bought the town, using a grant from the state to plant eucalyptus as a potential energy source and farming euphorbia, which produces a latex that can be refined into fuel.
But he had always been interested in solar, he said. Over the years, he talked to several companies about installing an array, but it was too expensive. Then he came across a Palo Alto-based company that used mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays on light-sensitive material to increase the efficiency and lower the cost, and decided to go ahead, especially given the generous state and federal incentives.
That company, Skyline, has since gone out of business, but the array shines on.
“It seems to come up when the normal path of the 20th century toward eternal growth is stymied or when groups of people feel like that path is not going to work for them,” said Dona Brown, a University of Vermont professor and author of “Back to the Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America.”
Mr. Freeman said he was now looking to a system to make hydrogen, both to store energy and to sell. The couple have put in five tent cabins using a modified Frank Lloyd Wright design and are talking about building an R.V. park to accommodate workers from the giant Ivanpah solar power plant nearby and a rare-earth mine just around the bend.
Mr. Freeman may not be the one to see all those plans to fruition, however. With diagnoses of congestive heart and renal failures, he is considering selling the town or finding a partner who can realize the vision.
Standing near the spot where, on those long-ago prospecting trips, he would call the train depot to tell the motorman to pick him up on the way back, he referred to the need for self-sufficiency in the face of global warming and economic instability.
“Things are evolving and the future is clear,” he said. “It’s just a question of how soon we can get there.”
Soda Lake in the Mojave National Preserve is the point where the Mojave River, which flows from the San Bernardino Mountains, reaches its end. A commercial solar project planned within a mile of the lake bed has triggered worries about water depletion in spring-fed ponds and the fate of an endangered fish, among other concerns. (DAVID DANELSKI)
By David Danelski
Riverside Press-Enterprise
The National Park Service has lodged strongly worded objections to a proposed 6.5-square-mile solar development about a half-mile from the Mojave National Preserve, saying the project would harm wildlife and suggesting that it be built elsewhere.
Preserve Superintendent Stephanie Dubois submitted an eight-page letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the public land where the Soda Mountain solar project is planned and which is handling the environmental analysis of the development.
A subsidiary of the Bechtel Corp., one of the world’s largest construction companies, wants to put solar panels on both sides of Interstate 15 about six miles south of Baker and just outside the northwest corner of the national preserve, where the bright white Soda Lake is a striking landmark. The lake, mostly dry, is bordered by springs, seeps and ponds, providing a small oasis for wildlife.
Dubois' letter says the BLM failed to adequately examine the project's potential to harm groundwater, threatened and endangered species, and scenic views, among other issues. The project would be detrimental to the desert tortoise, bighorn sheep and protected birds in the area and could reduce water supplies that support one of the few populations of an endangered fish, she wrote.
“We urge the BLM to reconsider the potential for this project to be sited on other BLM lands, private lands, or other degraded lands where renewable energy projects would present fewer adverse impacts to natural and cultural resources,” Dubois wrote in her March 3 letter to the BLM.
BLM spokeswoman Martha Maciel said Dubois’ letter is just one of many written comments the agency received as part of the process to evaluate Bechtel’s requests for a right-of-way permit the company needs in order to build on public land.
"We will consider all the comments and adjust our analysis where appropriate," said Maciel, reached by phone at her office in Sacramento.
The National Park Service isn't happy about a proposal to build a large solar facility on almost 4,200 acres next door to the Mojave National Preserve. The agency is citing the project's threats to wildlife, rare plants, groundwater, air quality, and wilderness characteristics of the 1.6 million acre unit.
The Soda Mountain Solar Project, which would be built by Bechtel on either side of Interstate 15 along the northwest edge of the Preserve, would pose serious threats to bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, migratory birds, and one of the rarest fish in the world, according to a comment letter on the project's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) filed by Preserve Superintendent Stephanie Dubois.
The project would generate a maximum of 350 megawatts of power by putting solar panels on more than half the project's total footprint: about 2,200 acres. But environmental advocates are saying that the project's damage to the Preserve isn't worth the energy the plant would generate -- especially considering no one seems to be interested in buying the power.
Due in part to the project's remoteness and lack of transmission capacity despite two lines running near the site, Bechtel has been unable to secure an agreement with any utility to buy power from the Soda Mountain project. "We believe this is the poster child for ill-sited projects in the California desert," said National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) representative Seth Shteir in an interview with Greenwire's Scott Streater. "We think this project has so many negative impacts to the natural resources in the Mojave National Preserve and adjacent wilderness study areas that it sort of defies common sense to site the project there."
Among the issues identified in the National Park Service comment letter are blocking a future migration corridor for the Preserve's bighorn sheep into the North Soda Mountains. Pointing out that bighorn sheep tend to avoid any kind of human-built infrastructure even in the absence of humans themselves, NPS states that "[i]f the project moves forward, bighorn sheep migration between the north and south areas of the project will likely be permanently impeded."
That's a problem, as the bighorn herd south of the project site, in the hills near the Desert Studies Center at Zzyzx, are one of a handful not yet exposed to the pneumonia currently ravaging sheep populations elsewhere in the Preserve. Sealing off the sheep's possible northern migration corridor could seal their fate if the pneumonia epidemic approaches from the south.
NPS also expressed concern about the project's effect on the endangered Mohave tui chub, whose sole native, non-transplanted population can be found in MC Spring a few miles downhill from the project. There are more of the chub in the artificial pond Lake Tuendae at Zzyzx. Bechtel intends to pump up to 60 acre-feet of groundwater from the project site each year to use for washing solar panels: if that affects the flow of groundwater that supplies MC Spring and Lake Tuendae, that's a problem for the fish.
The BLM argues in the project's DEIS that since it's not known what effect pumping would have on local groundwater, that there won't be a problem. NPS disagrees. "Without conclusive knowledge about the hydrology of the Soda Mountain Valley aquifer," says Dubois in the Park Service's comments, "the Project risks the consequence of irreversible damage to the habitat and the viability of this highly endangered species."
NPS also criticizes the project's likely impact on air quality from fugitive dust emissions, dark night skies, and risk of all those solar panels to the flocks of migrating birds regularly drawn to the area's permanent and ephemeral wetlands.
The Park Service ends its comments by asking for a meeting with BLM staff to discuss the project further. The group Basin and Range Watch reports partway down this page that the BLM's maps of the Soda Mountains project used in public meetings last month didn't show the boundaries of the Mojave National Preserve, so it's probably a good thing that NPS reminded BLM that they, and the Preserve, exist.
Luis Ramallo, owner of Alien Fresh Jerky in Baker, Calif., checks out aliens inside a "Back to the Future"-type car in front of his store. Ramallo wants to build a UFO-themed hotel to try to breathe some life back into the struggling desert town, whose biggest tourist attraction is a giant thermometer that's now gone dark. (Gina Ferazzi, Los Angeles Times)
Rick Rojas
Los Angeles Times
BAKER, Calif. — On the aging main drag here just off the route to Las Vegas, Luis Ramallo ticks off the worn buildings of Baker Boulevard by what they used to be.
There's the old IHOP and the Starbucks. The Chinese restaurant with broken windows and a weed-filled parking lot. In front of the closed Bun Boy, Baker's onetime biggest attraction — the World's Tallest Thermometer — has gone dark but still, in a way, tells the temperature of a town withering under the desert sun.
Yet on this recent weekday afternoon, a stream of drivers pull into the dusty parking lot of Ramallo's store, Alien Fresh Jerky. Inside the stucco box with a UFO out front and a bug-eyed extraterrestrial dangling his legs off the roof, customers peruse walls covered in dozens of flavors of dehydrated meats.
Ramallo, 56, believes his pluck has allowed him to thrive in a place where bigger businesses have failed.
"They don't take care of business," he boasts with a grin. "We take care of business."
The Argentina-born electrical engineer's next venture could test that claim: Ramallo is planning a multimillion-dollar, 31-room hotel in the shape of a flying saucer that has hovered in his mind for a decade.
He hopes the hotel will inject new vigor into a community of about 730 people that doesn't have a pharmacy or grocery store.
"Sometimes I can see a business where other people don't see it," Ramallo says. "I want to make improvements and put Baker on the map again, and we will." In business, he says, "you have to believe in your idea, and — 200% — I believe in my idea."
::
In the back of the store, Ramallo pulls out rumpled folders filled with newspaper clippings, sketches and a Popular Mechanics with a UFO on the cover. He finds the stack of renderings, the many iterations the UFO hotel has taken since he first hired an architect in 2009.
One version looked like an oddly shaped office building with windows. "You want me to put in windows?" he says he told the architect. "There's nothing to see in Baker!"
In another, the hotel was a khaki-colored oval. "This is a glass hamburger!" he sneers. "Maybe for some people that can be a UFO, but not for me."
Ramallo's son, Martin, 32, walks into the office.
"He believes in it before seeing it," says Martin, who, like two of his sisters, works for his father. "That's the difference between visionaries and spectators. That's him. He's the visionary."
Ramallo had a business doing electrical work in Las Vegas before he started selling jerky.
He started selling outside Area 51 in Lincoln County, Nev. As an immigrant, he would joke: "I was actually the alien in Area 51!"
Ramallo said he decided to leave the roadside stand. But, as a family, they voted to stay in the jerky business and find a permanent location. They also thought the alien theme was one worth hanging on to.
In 2001, he passed through Baker and spotted the six-acre parcel with a little building that would become the first home of Alien Fresh Jerky. The family lived in a small home on the property.
The growing business eventually moved to the larger store it now occupies. In 2004, Ramallo closed his electrical business to focus on jerky.
Jacob Overson, general manager for the Baker Community Services District, recalls many people thinking he was just another outsider whose business would sputter after a few months.
"No one really had much faith in him," Overson says, "but he proved us all wrong."
::
Ramallo has long imagined the graphite saucer of a spacecraft, lined with circuits and tubes filled with blue light, landing in a haze, a few aliens wandering off into the desert.
Struggling to convey his vision, he traveled in 2012 to a convention of theme-park designers. He met David Weiss, a freelance creative director who has designed props and theme park attractions. Weiss eventually nailed it.
Ramallo hopes to begin construction over the summer. The project — which could cost close to $25 million, funded by Ramallo and a small group of investors — cleared its first hurdle in January when San Bernardino County officials approved the land-use plans.
A UFO hotel wouldn't have much competition.
Two motels have closed. Another, next door to Alien Fresh Jerky, has vacancies but isn't exactly a five-star stay. A for-sale sign hangs out front.
But some have hope Ramallo's project wouldn't meet a similar fate.
Nono Khasa, who manages gas stations and fast-food restaurants in Baker, says the town is a stopping point for families, film crews and other motorists traversing I-15 or exploring the Mojave Desert.
"They are always looking for a place to stay," she says. "If there's a decent hotel in town, I think it will work well."
Overson says if the hotel were successful, it would bring jobs and perhaps a renewed optimism.
But he acknowledges Ramallo's risk in investing so much in a place that others have fled.
"It's either going to make or break him," Overson said. "It's a hell of a gamble, but all of his friends say he likes taking those gambles."
::
Ramallo drives past the modest home where he lived with his family when they started and pulls up to a wrought-iron gate, a golden "R" affixed to it.
With "Rancho Ramallo" emblazoned on an outer wall, Ramallo's new home has a manicured garden and a portico stretching over the driveway. At two stories, he brags it's the tallest building in Baker.
"This is my house," he says, brimming with pride. "In Baker."
There's an eight-car garage, a swimming pool, a lawn as green as a golf course and a barbecue pit big enough to roast entire goats for his birthday, just like in Argentina.
He calls Baker "my place," and has already told his family: When he dies, he wants his ashes spread here.
"This city," he says, "has given us a future."
He gives little thought to the possibility of his long-dreamed-of hotel becoming yet another shuttered business on Baker Boulevard.
"If it fails, it fails," Ramallo says. "What are you going to do? I'm not going to kill myself."
He's built all this from the ground up once. If he has to, he figures, he can do it again.
Industrial-scale solar development is well under way in California's Mojave Desert, where more than 3,500 acres of public land are being covered with BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar-power project. In the fight against climate change, the Mojave is about to take one for the team.
BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar-power-plant construction site is bathed with the light from sunrise as cranes loom over the Mojave Desert and crews work to build one of facility's giant "power towers." (MARK BOSTER / MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS)
By Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times
IVANPAH VALLEY, Calif. — Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the "power tower" emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket.
Clustered nearby are hangar-size assembly buildings, looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 public acres. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors — each the size of a garage door — are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the year, they will become six square miles of gleaming reflectors, sweeping from Interstate 15 to the Clark Mountains along California's eastern border.
BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar-power project will soon be a humming city with 24-hour lighting, a wastewater-processing facility and a gas-fired power plant. To make room, BrightSource has mowed down a swath of desert plants, displaced dozens of animal species and relocated scores of imperiled desert tortoises, a move some experts say could kill up to one-third of the reptiles.
Despite its behemoth footprint, the Ivanpah project has slipped easily into place, unencumbered by lasting legal opposition or public outcry from California's environmental community.
The public got its chance to comment at scores of open houses, but the real political horse trading took place in meetings involving solar developers, federal regulators and leaders of some of the nation's top environmental organizations.
Away from public scrutiny, they crafted a united front in favor of utility-scale solar development, often making difficult compromises.
"I have spent my entire career thinking of myself as an advocate on behalf of public lands and acting for their protection," said Johanna Wald, a veteran environmental attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "I am now helping facilitate an activity on public lands that will have very significant environmental impacts. We are doing it because of the threat of climate change. It's not an accommodation; it's a change I had to make to respond to climate."
That unusual collaboration — along with generous federal subsidies and allotments of public land — has sparked a wholesale remodeling of the American desert.
Industrial-scale solar development is well under way in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The federal government has furnished more public property to this cause than it has for oil and gas exploration in the past decade: 21 million acres, more than the area of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties put together.
If only a few of the proposed projects are built, hundreds of square miles of wild land will be scraped clear. Several thousand miles of power-transmission corridors will be created.
The desert will be scarred, and no amount of mitigation will repair it, according to scores of federal and state environmental reviews.
"The scale of impacts that we are facing, collectively across the desert, is phenomenal," said Dennis Schramm, former superintendent at neighboring Mojave National Preserve. "The reality of the Ivanpah project is that what it will look like on the ground is worse than any of the analyses predicted."
In the fight against climate change, the Mojave Desert is about to take one for the team.
Not cheap energy
For decades, America's Western deserts have been dusty storehouses for government scrap, a lode for minerals, a staging ground for tanks and military maneuvers.
But the thrum of industry is afoot, bringing Space Age technology and a sense of urgency.
The BrightSource solar plant stands as an exclamation point in the desert.
The $2 billion plant is an amalgam of gadgetry designed to wring the maximum energy from the sun. Computers continually focus the field of mirrors to a center tower filled with water, which will heat to more than 1,000 degrees. The resulting steam drives an array of turbines capable of generating 370 megawatts, enough to power roughly 140,000 homes during peak hours.
Capturing a free and clean source of energy is not cheap. Solar is the Cadillac of energy, with capital costs and other market factors making it three times more expensive than natural gas or coal.
Ratepayers' bills will be up to 50 percent higher for renewable energy, according to an analysis from the consumer advocate branch of the state Public Utilities Commission.
What has opened the way for such a costly source of energy is the dramatic turn in federal policy. As early as 2005, the Bush administration established generous programs to reward renewable-energy developers. The Obama administration sweetened the pot, offering $45 billion in federal tax credits, guaranteed loans and grants.
On the state level, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger freed large solar plants from property taxes and handed out $90 million in exemptions from sales and use taxes. Under Gov. Jerry Brown, the state invested more than $70 million in clean-energy research last year, paid for by a ratepayer surcharge.
The money has sparked a land rush echoing the speculative booms in mining, railroad construction and oil and gas on Western federal land.
One of the first firms out of the gate was Oakland-based BrightSource Energy, which received $1.6 billion in federally guaranteed loans in addition to hundreds of millions in private investment.
By taking advantage of the available government subsidies, shrewd solar developers can get taxpayers to cover close to 80 percent of a multibillion-dollar project. The rest comes from investors, attracted by what amounts to a tax shelter.
Federal and state officials have used job creation to partly justify their subsidy of solar companies. During the two to three years of a solar plant's construction, most new jobs will go to union tradesmen. But after a plant is built, employment opportunities are limited.
BrightSource's Ivanpah facility is expected to employ 1,000 workers at the height of construction, but that will shrink to 86 full-time maintenance and facility workers once it is up and running.
"What troubles me is that the public has bought the whole solar expansion hook, line and sinker because it's 'renewable,' " Schramm said. "The public would be up in arms if someone was building Disneyland next to a national park."
The environmental cost
Larry LaPre, the Bureau of Land Management's wildlife biologist for much of the Mojave, said some aspects of the project have been carefully considered and painstakingly done. Other approaches, however, are "complete nonsense," among them BrightSource's experimental approach of shearing the tops of desert plants so they fit under elevated solar mirrors. The company calls it "gentle mowing."
"To get another barrel cactus, even a small one, takes 100 years," he said, driving around the Ivanpah construction site. LaPre peered through the windshield and ticked off what living things might be left after the developers finish.
"The birds are already gone. They're outta there," he said. The site "will have plants, short plants, and it will have mice and kangaroo rats and some lizards. That's it. Maybe some more common birds. The insects are an unknown, because you could have massive losses of pollinators because you have all these insects getting burned in the mirrors."
Mainstream environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have been largely mute, having traded the picket line for a seat at the table when development plans were drawn.
The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the nation's most aggressively litigious environmental groups, has not challenged the Ivanpah project. It signed a confidential agreement not to oppose the project in exchange for concessions for the desert tortoise, mandating that BrightSource buy land elsewhere for conservation.
Some 24 environmental groups signed statements largely supporting the aims of solar developers.
Federal officials, solar companies and environmental groups argue that the urgency brought on by climate change has forced difficult trade-offs.
"We did the best we could," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.
Scott Honan, environmental manager for Molycorp Minerals, talks about the Molycorp rare earth mine near Interstate 15 in Mountain Pass. (LaFonzo Carter)
Wesley G. Hughes
Redlands Daily Facts
MOUNTAIN PASS - No one was on their way to Vegas 1.3 billion years ago when a large, high-quality deposit of rare earths formed here.
Molten rock was pushing up through the Earth's mantle in eastern San Bernardino County and leaving a sizable deposit of the metals just poking its nose through the planet's surface.
Uranium hunters stumbled across it around 1950 - rare earths are often found in the company of heavier radioactive metals - and eventually it came under the ownership of Molycorp, a Colorado mining company.
Today, according to Molycorp CEO Mark A. Smith, "potential buyers are beating down the door to get those rare earths," which Molycorp stopped mining in 2002 because of environmental problems - and China could do it cheaper, anyway, he said.
Things change. China has virtually cut the world off from its supply of rare earths.
The Asian nation has the world's largest deposits, but Mountain Pass is No. 2, experts say, and Molycorp is back in the race.
Why should we care?
Rare earth metals - or oxides - are vital commodities for a range of products, from smart phones to smart bombs.
And the company's Mountain Pass Mine promises to make lots of money for Molycorp.
It's potential customers can breathe a sigh of relief now that there is another source of the elements. They are so relieved they have pushed Molycorp from a 52-week low of $12.10 on the New York Stock Exchange to a Jan. 5 high of $62.10. It has moderated a bit since the high and closed at $42.99 on Friday, down $3.55 on the day.
Molycorp is tearing down its old plant and building a $500-million operation about 15 miles from the Nevada border to mine and process the ores.
The company celebrated earlier this month with a groundbreaking and barbecue for the board of directors, top management and employees at the site. They are calling it Project Phoenix, Smith said.
But not everyone is happy with the operation.
A national environmental group, Western Watersheds project, criticized Molycorp's 8.6-mile proposed gas pipeline, which it says traverses protected desert tortoise habitat.
Western Watersheds filed a complaint Jan. 14 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeking to halt the Ivanpah Solar Project, which it says got an inferior examination in its Environmental Impact Statement to help it meet a deadline. That deadline has been extended a year to Dec. 31, and Western Watersheds wants a proper EIS done, which it predicts will halt the power project being built by BrightSource Energy.
"We want it to go away," said Michael Connor, California director for Western Watersheds.
He was unfamiliar with Molycorp's core project, but the pipeline was mentioned in the complaint his group filed.
Still, the Mountain Pass project is gaining interest from potential customers, cut off from China's rare earths but interested in what's in Molycorp's huge open-pit mines.
"We are getting attention - a lot of attention," Smith said on the day of the barbecue.
He expects the new plant to be operational by mid-2012.
SAFER MINING?
Jim Sims, Molycorp's director of public affairs, and Scott Homan, the company's environmental manager, explained to visitors at the mine how environmental problems that played a role in halting production back in 2002 have been eliminated by new technology.
Before Molycorp halted production, the company piped liquid residue - mostly salt water - to evaporation ponds in Ivanpah Dry Lake - a scant 10 miles from Mountain Pass.
During a process of putting rinse water through the 8-inch plastic pipeline, pressure got too great. The pipe burst in several places. A buildup of radioactive material inside the pipe led to contamination of the aquifer under the dry lake.
That raised a public outcry that included concerns from county regulators and environmentalists and the shutdown.
During earlier operations, Molycorp had been the biggest user of hydrochloric acid west of the Mississippi River, Sims said. The acid was used to separate the rare earths from the ore. In order to stop the acid's action after separation, Molycorp neutralized it with sodium hydroxide and the product of the combination became salt water.
But by using electricity with chemistry, a process known as electrolysis, to treat the salt water, Molycorp found they could change it back into its original hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide.
Voila! The chemicals could be re-used almost endlessly. No longer will 15 to 25 tanker trucks full of acid be arriving each day at Mountain Pass and no longer will the salt water be piped to Ivanpah Dry Lake for evaporation. Nor will it get the chance to build up radioactive scale inside the miles of drainpipe.
In addition, Molycorp will no longer buy the most expensive electric power Edison sells. It will generate its own. Another 8-inch pipeline is to be built to carry low-polluting natural gas, which will be used for power generation and to reduce the use of diesel at the mine.
For Molycorp, these moves have given immense benefits: The company has dramatically reduced its environmental impact and has led it to claim it has cut its costs to half those of the Chinese today. And Sims said that soon Chinese costs are likely to double because of environmental changes Chinese miners are being forced to make. More good news for Molycorp.
CONCERNS
All that could be jeopardized by Western Watershed's complaint.
Molycorp said repeatedly that it had "crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's" and it had no more hoops or hurdles for the project.
That said, the company faces a hearing before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it was learned Friday. A Molycorp spokesman could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.
And there's still environmental concerns over the tortoise and the pipeline.
When Connor - the California director of Western Watersheds - was told about some of Molycorp's efforts to be environmentally friendly,he said: "That doesn't help the tortoise."
BENEFITS FOR THE COUNTY
County officials are excited about the project.
They are predicting it will have long-time benefits for the county through new jobs, for business and for property and sales taxes.
Most of the 700 construction jobs for the new plant will come from near and far. Most of the 300 permanent jobs will most likely be filled by Las Vegas residents, because it is closer to Mountain Pass than population centers in California.
But First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, whose district includes Mountain Pass, called the project "great news. It's been a long time coming.
"I think we will put a lot of people to work. I just don't have the numbers. It's a major mining operation that will use a lot of trades and professions."
Mitzelfelt also predicted Molycorp will be buying supplies locally.
Sims, Molycorp's director of public affairs, confirmed that.
"Molycorp is trying as much as possible to buy equipment and supplies in San Bernardino County," he said.
SUCCESS?
Molycorp officials say that they don't know the full extent of the rare earth to be found at Mountain Pass. They won't know until they dig for it, they assert.
Since 1865, various minerals have been mined in the historic Clark Mining District, where Mountain Pass is located, according to the project's environmental review.
For 57 years, Molycorp and its predecessors have recovered bastnasite, which contains 14 rare earth elements.
Its initial use was as a concentrate called mischmetal, which was used as flints for cigarette lighters and in some metallurgical applications.
In the 1960s, the EIR continued, additional mineral recovery operations were added to allow separation and recovery of individual rare earth elements, including europium, a critical element for making color television.
At the time, Mountain Pass was the world's only commercial source of europium.
Subsequent rare earth elements were produced, and Molycorp plans to mine more, bringing to 10 of 14 rare earth elements that will be produced at what is now a 55-acre site, with plenty of room to expand.
The 55 acres is part of more than 2,000 owned by the company, which also has federal mining claims for the next 30 years on another 8,000 acres.
With a limited world supply of rare earths, Molycorp is in a good financial position, said Christopher Reed, chemistry professor at UC Riverside.
The marketplace - whether its for oil, gold or rare earth elements - is full of cut-throat players, Reed said.
As for Molycorp, he said, "Time is on their side. In the longrun, they really can't fail."
Development of the proposed Ivanpah Airport, considered crucial to Southern Nevada's future just a few years ago, has been suspended indefinitely because of lower passenger numbers and planned improvements at McCarran International Airport.
The Ivanpah plan has been going through an environmental review, and studies already under way will be completed, said Rosemary Vassiliadis, deputy director of aviation for the Clark County Aviation Department.
There also will be continued monitoring of the site, on Interstate 15 north of Primm, in case other plans or developments would have an effect on the proposed airport, she said.
But with passenger counts at McCarran declining, it was decided that a new airport wasn't an immediate need after all.
"We don't lose anything" by stopping the planning process now, Vassiliadis said. "We can restart it at any time."
Halting the process now is expected to save $15 million, spokeswoman Elaine Sanchez said.
In April, almost 3.4 million passengers passed through McCarran, which is 5 percent lower than the more than 3.5 million who used the airport in April 2009. In 2010, passenger counts are 3.9 percent lower than in 2009, and 2009's numbers were 8.2 percent less than 2008's counts.
"The drop in traffic, the economy, are certainly two elements that affect the need for a new commercial airport," Vassiliadis said.
Another element is known as NextGen, or Next Generation Air Transportation System. It involves replacing ground-based air traffic control systems with one using satellites, which will allow planes to fly closer together on more direct routes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
McCarran's current capacity is 53 million passengers a year. Because of the air traffic improvements, that should increase to 55 million within 18 months, Vassiliadis said.
If the program is fully funded, McCarran could handle 60 million people a year, she said.
McCarran was the nation's seventh-busiest airport in 2009 with 40.5 million passengers.
No timeline has been established for restarting planning for Ivanpah, which was once expected to open as soon as 2017.
"We know we're beyond 2025, so it wouldn't be meaningful to come up with a date," Vassiliadis said.
That's a far different tune than the one being sung as recently as 2008. When Las Vegas was still growing and adding more hotel rooms, plans called for the $7 billion Ivanpah airport to handle as many as 35 million passengers a year, as well as air cargo.
The project had its critics, though, who were concerned about putting an airport so close to the Mojave National Preserve just over the California state line.
And the area is home to several protected species, including desert tortoises that are relocated when development threatens their habitat elsewhere.
As energy officials begin surveying Southern California's deserts to prepare for solar power development, they are making some unexpected discoveries: human remains.
The bones of at least two people were found last month by biologists conducting wildlife surveys required for solar projects in the Mojave Desert, a sparsely populated region that covers thousands of square miles. The survey crews found one set of bones near Baker and another on the extreme edge of California near the border town of Primm, Nev.
Both finds are being investigated. The identities and causes of death have not been determined.
At least one of the biologists, far from being creeped out, said finding human remains is "interesting."
Alice Karl was surveying land May 18 just outside of Primm and west of Interstate 15 when a member of her crew came across the skull and other scattered bones, along with some clothing.
Karl, whose home base is Davis, was working for Southern California Edison, which intends to improve power lines to transmit electricity from solar plants planned in the area.
She said finding human bones isn't much different than finding the skeleton of a large animal.
"No, it is not creepy. ... We are biologists," Karl said. "It is a little unusual."
Not all that unusual, though.
Karl said she has found four sets of remains in her 31-year career. She figures at least one, discovered about eight years ago near Desert Center in Riverside County, had been murdered: The skull had a bullet-sized hole in it.
In the Primm case, Karl said the crew identified the bones' location and called authorities.
Four days earlier, another wildlife survey crew came across a human skeleton near Interstate 15, about 10 miles east of Baker.
On April 2, college geology students doing field work near Interstate 10 about 20 miles east of Desert Center found a human jawbone, triggering an investigation into a possible homicide, Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Dean Spivacke said.
DNA TAKES TIME
So far, not much is known about the remains found in May, other than both were men, said David Van Norman, a deputy coroner investigator for the coroner's division of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
It takes a state laboratory more than four months to analyze DNA from skeletal remains and seek matches with DNA records kept in a national database, Van Norman said. In California, state law requires close relatives of people missing more than 30 days to submit DNA samples for the database.
A skeleton found last year in an off-roading area south of Barstow was identified this week through DNA analysis as a missing San Diego County man. Officials are now working to track down his next-of-kin, Van Norman said.
Law enforcement officials said they expect more remains to turn up as energy companies prepare to build solar plants in the desert.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is processing 78 applications to put solar plants on more than 1,000 square miles of public land between Ridgecrest and El Centro. Each would require surveys to determine what sensitive plants and animals are in the project's path.
Having so many people on the ground finding remains will help solve murder and missing person cases, Van Norman said.
The sooner a body is found, the more evidence can be gathered from bones, such as DNA samples, clothing and personal effects, he said.
"I am just delighted by this," Van Norman said. "These remains are people who otherwise would not be found."
Wildlife biologists offer more than just additional sets of eyes scanning remote places.
They are trained scientists who can tell the difference between animal and human bones, Karl said. They walk specified grids. And they carry global positioning devices that can pinpoint the locations of what they find.
The DesertXpress will travel 184 miles from Victorville to Las Vegas in 84 minutes.Andrew Edwards, Staff Writer San Bernardino Sun
VICTORVILLE - Construction crews could begin work on a proposed high-speed rail line to Las Vegas as early as next year, executives with the company behind the project said.
"The strong need for the project is clear and obvious," said Andrew Mack, vice president of Las Vegas-based DesertXpress Enterprises.
The DesertXpress idea is based on the assumption that Vegas-bound Southern Californians would be willing to pay to park their cars Victorville and forego the time and potential frustrations of freeway travel. The company says it can build the route with private funding.
The proposed high speed rail route a separate from the proposal to establish a Maglev route from Las Vegas to Anaheim.
As planned, the DesertXpress line would allow Southern California passengers to board trains at a north Victorville train station and speed to Sin City as quickly as 150 mph. The line, which would generally follow the route of the 15 Freeway, would feature 183 to 200 miles of track, depending upon its ultimate alignment.
DesertXpress is still awaiting approval from the federal government. The firm has completed a draft environmental impact statement and Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Rob Kulat said the agency could make a decision in nine months.
Mack said DesertXpress' business model is similar to that of a toll road, and the firm plans to rely on ticket revenues to recoup the initial investment.
DesertXpress reports that construction and other start-up costs will total $3.5 to $4 billion. and that the line could be built in four years. The midpoint fare price is projected to be about $50.
Victorville mayor pro tem Tom Rothschild, a DesertXPress supporter, said a high-speed rail line can be built in the near future. He thinks Maglev, which uses magnetic force to levitate and propel trains, is not yet practical.
"Maglev is great, don't mistake me. I think it's the greatest technology for the next half of this century," Rothschild said.
DesertXpress' draft environmental statement projects that the establishment of a high-speed rail station in Victorville could create 361 to 463 jobs for Victorville. Rothschild views the proposal as a boon for his city.
"For us, it would be incredible. We've got a lot of developable land in the freeway corridor," he said, referring to the northern part of the city where DesertXPress' station could be built.
If DesertXpress happens, Mack said the most logical city to expand to would be Palmdale, where he said the train could link to the proposed California High Speed Rail system.
But in Barstow, 25 miles north of the proposed Victorville station, there's a question of whether DesertXpress should stop there as well.
DesertXpress' environmental document reports that although ridership studies did not support a station there, the company is studying the feasibility of a station at Barstow Outlet Mall based on the concerns of Barstow officials.
"We had the freeway come and take out Route 66, and we know what that means here," Barstow planning consultant Paul Secord on a video recording of special meeting of the Barstow City Council that was held April 28.
Snow covers Joshua trees in the Antelope Valley desert Monday afternoon.
I-5, I-15 and the Antelope Valley Freeway are shut down, stranding thousands of motorists. Some try to catch Metrolink trains and others bed down in motels. The storm is blamed for at least one death.
By Alexandra Zavis and Jennifer Oldham Los Angeles Times
An unusually strong arctic blast dumped snow over a large swath of Southern California mountains and high deserts Wednesday, shutting down some of the state's busiest freeways, stranding thousands of motorists and cutting off several communities.
The storm's combination of frigid air, powerful winds and heavy precipitation dropped the snow level to an unusually low 2,000 feet, with at least 20 inches of snow in Wrightwood, 5 inches in the hills above Malibu and 6 inches or more in Palmdale, where all major routes from Los Angeles were blocked.
Forecasters expect the cold temperatures to continue today as the storm moves out, and another storm is expected to hit the region Sunday night.
Snow and ice shut down three of the region's key north-south routes -- Interstate 5, Interstate 15 and the 14 Freeway -- along with numerous mountain roads and desert highways.
The closures caused traffic nightmares for drivers trying to get in or out of Southern California. The severity of the storm caught many by surprise, leaving them stranded on the side of freeways, at rest stops and trying to stay warm inside their cars along snow-packed roads around Big Bear.
It had already started to rain when Garcia Ignacio of Lancaster drove off early Wednesday with his wife, Hortencia, to a kitchen remodeling job in Woodland Hills. But he never expected the drops to turn into sheets of snow. The couple spent the rest of the day trying to find a way home as authorities shut down one freeway after another. They finally gave up and checked into a La Quinta Inn in Santa Clarita.
"My 20-year-old and my 16-year-old are stuck home in Lancaster, and my wife and I are stuck here in a hotel," said Ignacio, who owns Aaron's Construction in Lancaster. "But I'm not worried about them, though. I called them already, and they were playing in the snow."
The storms brought steady rain to many parts of the Los Angeles Basin, and major street flooding was reported in Palm Springs. The opening night of the 100th annual Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade was called off by organizers because of choppy seas caused by the storm.
Forecasters said the Las Vegas Strip could receive 3 inches of snow overnight. The weather caused some flight delays at the city's McCarren International Airport, which doesn't have snowplows.
The storm was blamed for at least one death, which occurred when a helicopter installing power lines crashed near Bouquet Canyon in Santa Clarita, killing a mechanic on the ground. The cause of the crash is under investigation, but it's believed a strong gust of wind hit the aircraft as it hovered just after liftoff, said Ian Gregor of the Federal Aviation Administration. The craft's tail broke off and a rotor blade struck the man on the ground, he said. The pilot suffered minor injuries but refused medical treatment, said Inspector Ron Haralson of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
By about 1:30 p.m., traffic had ground to a halt along the northbound 14 at Sand Canyon Road as frustrated motorists tried to exit the shuttered freeway or pull onto the shoulder. Palm trees were doubled over in the lashing winds, and drivers wrestled to keep their vehicles in lanes.
A cluster of nearby restaurants and gas stations was jammed with people trying to figure out whether to wait out the storm or abandon their vehicles in the parking lot and take a train home. Some fretted about pets left outside in the cold. Others said they could not understand why the roads were closed, when they had stayed open in worse storms in the past.
Littlerock resident Deborah Deckert left her job at Warner Bros. in Burbank at 9:30 a.m. hoping to beat the freeway closures. Sitting at a Bergie's steakhouse, where high desert residents stood watching weather reports on big-screen TVs, she said it took her three hours to travel several miles on the 14 between the Sand Canyon and Soledad Canyon Road exits. She tried back roads as well but was forced to turn around. By the time she got off the 14 and pulled up in front of the restaurant, she was almost out of gas.
"I drive a clutch," she said. "I kept thinking to myself, as I was stuck in my car, 'At least this is good for my calves.' "
Stranded commuters jammed train stations, trying to get home. Metrolink agreed to honor bus passes from the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita through this morning. But trains were running up to an hour late because of snow on the lines and poor visibility that made signals hard to see from the Via Princessa station in Santa Clarita to Lancaster, said Metrolink spokesman Francisco Oaxaca.
Motorists searched in vain for a parking spot at the Via Princessa station as the northbound 4:30 p.m. train approached. Lines at the ticket machines were at least 50 deep, and dozens more waited in rows alongside the tracks.
"Santa and all the nurses had to leave the Christmas party early," joked Debbie Ramirez, a nurse at Facey Medical Center in Santa Clarita, as she stood next to a passenger in a Santa suit. She rarely takes the train and had to ask other passengers which direction it came from.
Some commuters told of waiting in the freezing rain for 2 1/2 hours to buy a train ticket and then enduring another hour wait on the platform because the train was late.
Others took the weather in stride. A steady fall of big, wet flakes in the Antelope Valley community of Quartz Hill meant one thing to Kevin Vogel: snow day. He called a buddy and they made plans to go four-by-fouring in the fresh-fallen snow.
"It will be like a little sleigh ride out there," Vogel said.
His only concern was for his 8- and 9-year-old children, staying with grandparents in Las Vegas, who could get stranded as they try to make their way home today. "I wish they were here," he said. "I want to make a snowman, and for once they are not here."
Some businesses saw opportunity in the lack of bus service caused by the snow. Keith Bastedo, owner of Palmdale's High Desert Taxi Transportation, said business was up 100%, largely from commuters stranded at bus and train stations. Workers at two Palmdale tow-truck companies said they were too busy even to talk on the phone.
The Hampton Inn and Suites in Palmdale was sold out by 2 p.m. "This is usually our slow week, because of the holidays next week," said assistant manager Melissa Magallenos, one of two hotel administrators on duty when the deluge of customers began about noon.
The rain caused accidents and slow traffic on freeways around Southern California. In Palm Springs, Whitewater Wash overflowed, sending the runoff into the streets. San Diego firefighters and lifeguards evacuated 21 people along the overflowing Tijuana River. About 50 horses were also evacuated, but three others drowned and one was euthanized after tripping on barbed wire.
Steven Van Horn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, said the combination of moisture swept in off the coast and cold temperatures made this storm unusually snowy.
"Moisture has been pumping into the Antelope Valley all day and the temperatures have been cold enough, so we are getting a lot of snow," he said. "This is a fairly unusual storm. We don't usually get a cold storm like this until January. But this is our cold, rainy season so every once in a while you can get a storm like this."
The snowfall is expected to ease overnight, but frigid temperatures are predicted into today.
Another storm could strike as soon as Sunday night or Monday morning, Van Horn said. But it is not expected to bring as much cold or snow.
Snow blankets the Red Rock Canyon National Park 15 miles west of Las Vegas.
School district calls off classes for first time in 30 years, flights canceled
By Sun Staff Las Vegas Sun
A rare snowstorm blanketed the Las Vegas Valley on Wednesday, delaying flights, causing widespread fender-benders and canceling events. As much as 8 inches of snow fell in parts of the valley, forecasters said this morning.
The rarities continued Wednesday night with the Clark County School District's announcement that students are getting a snow day today. It's the first snow day for Clark County students since 1979, when a storm dropped 9.9 inches of snow in January that year.
With ice and snow on the roads, and district buses responsible for transporting more than 80,000 students, closing school was the prudent move, Superintendent Walt Rulffes said.
Bus drivers, teachers and other classroom employees will also have the day off. Administrators, 12-month employees and office staff are expected to be at work, since some students might show up at school and require adult assistance, Rulffes explained in an e-mail to staff. In a statement this morning, the school district said all school-based food service personnel, food service truck drivers and warehouse employees are not to report for work. However, all other food service personnel shall report for work or contact their supervisor.
School Board President Mary Beth Scow said she planned to spend the day watching holiday movies and baking cookies with her grandchildren, who will have the day off from school. She said she didn't envy the teachers who will have a hard enough time keeping students' attention on Friday, the last day before the two-week winter break.
A makeup day might be scheduled later in the school year. Additional information on school closures will be posted on the district's Web site at ccsd.net.
The National Weather Service finally lifted a winter storm warning at 6 a.m. today. The weather service said its Las Vegas office had reported 3.6 inches of snow by 9:50 p.m. Wednesday. And there was a report of 8 inches measured in Henderson shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday.
The weather service said the main low pressure area was centered over northern Clark County at 3:30 a.m. today and was moving slowly east.
Heavy snow had already fallen over much of the warning area and another 2 to 4 inches would be possible above the 2,500-foot level elevations through early morning, the weather service said.
The weather service this morning urged travelers to take with them warm clothing, an extra flashlight, food and water in their vehicles in case of an emergency and to be alert for slippery spots on roads.
The warning area included Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City. An advisory from the weather service Wednesday afternoon called the snow event "extremely rare."
The 3.6 inches of snow through late Wednesday at the weather service office two miles southwest of McCarran International Airport set a record for the most snow ever in the month of December in Las Vegas since the beginning of official records in 1937, the weather service said. The office is the official recording station for weather in the Las Vegas Valley.
Measurable snow has only fallen on four other occasions since 1937 in December, the weather service said: 2 inches on Dec. 15, 1967; 0.4 inches on Dec. 5, 1972; 1 inch on Dec. 6, 1998; and 1.3 inches on Dec. 30, 2003.
Not all areas of the Las Vegas Valley had snow accumulations because a mix of rain and snow fell much of the time. Also, warm ground temperatures kept the snow from sticking in some areas, the weather service said.
Downtown Las Vegas and the northern parts of the Strip saw snow, but little to no accumulation, the weather service said.
However, 1.7 inches of snow was measured on The Strip at the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada" sign. Areas of heaviest snow measured between 3 to 6 inches, with local amounts of 8-plus inches in Henderson, the weather service said.
Flights at McCarran resume
The heavy snow caused numerous delays at McCarran International Airport on Wednesday, but airport officials announced this morning that arriving and departing flights operations resumed around 6 a.m.
While McCarran didn't close overnight, low visibility caused by the snow had stopped activity from late Wednesday afternoon until early this morning. The airport is the seventh busiest in the country.
Airport officials said the snow that accumulated overnight on McCarran's runways is melting under the morning sunlight and each of the airport's three runways is open for flight operations.
Because of the poor weather condition Wednesday, many airlines cancelled flights and the Federal Aviation Administration issued a national ground stop that temporarily kept most aircraft bound for Las Vegas from departing.
Travelers who want to fly out of the airport today should contact their air carrier to find out their flight status, airport officials said. Those expecting arriving passengers should also contact the appropriate airlines directly, officials said.
Flight information can also be obtained at www.mccarran.com.
Texans stranded at airport
More than 100 residents of a tiny Texas town who flew to Las Vegas last week paid for by the Las Vegas Convention and Tourism Authority remained stranded at the airport Wednesday night.
Men in cowboy hats slept next to each other near the McCarran exits after finding out their 3 p.m. flight to Cranfills Gap, Texas, was postponed until 9 a.m. Thursday morning.
"We thought we would be able to get back to the Gap and enjoy the sunshine," said Laura Rose, a Cranfills Gap resident. "Didn't think that we'd end up in the desert in the snow."
The Las Vegas tourism group paid for nearly half of the town's 350 residents to visit Las Vegas for five days as part of a marketing campaign to promote the city.
Power outage
Along with the snow, NV Energy reported power outages Wednesday evening along Desert Inn Road, near Maryland Parkway, Mohave Avenue, Pecos Road, Eastern Avenue, Boulder Highway and Seneca Street; Rancho Drive and Valley View Boulevard, Rancho Drive and Washington Avenue; Lake Mead Parkway and Martin Luther King Boulevard; and Washington Avenue and Martin Luther King Blvd.
NV Energy said crews were working to fix the outages. It was unclear what caused the outages.
Police were directing traffic along Maryland Parkway to Pecos Road due to stoplight outages.
Traffic accidents numerous
Streets around the valley were becoming slick and slushy through the evening and into the morning.
Heavy traffic and snow-covered slick streets made the uphill climb troublesome on Eastern Avenue in Henderson, leading to heavy congestion Wednesday night.
The city of Henderson road crews were continuing today to focus efforts to clear snow off Eastern Avenue from Intestate 215 south to the Anthem community, according to Cindy Herman, Henderson's public information manager. Herman said residents are asked to remove abandoned vehicles to assist with the clean-up efforts.
"Commuters along Eastern Avenue should use caution as the weather, change in grade and abandoned vehicles are contributing to hazardous travel conditions. If possible, Anthem residents are asked to avoid the area and find alternate routes for morning commutes," Herman said in a statement released this morning.
The Nevada Department of Transportation announced this morning that Interstate 15 is still closed south of Las Vegas in each direction and is expected to open by noon between Primm and Baker.
The I-15 southbound lanes are closed at St. Rose Parkway because of a truck accident and diesel spill at mile post 27, according to Robert McKenzie, NDOT public information officer.
U.S. Highway 95's southbound lanes are closed at Railroad Pass to Nevada State Route 163 because of snow and icy conditions, McKenzie said. State routes 161, 164 and 165 are closed to traffic.
U.S. Highway 93's north and south lanes to Boulder City are now open again. State Routes 160 and 159 are open to traffic with no controls, McKenzie said.
He said chains, snow tires or four-wheel drive vehicle restrictions are in place for State Route 156 to Mount Charleston. State Route 157 to Mount Charleston is open only to residents until further notice, McKenzie said.
The Nevada Highway Patrol and Metro Police said there had been numerous fender-benders on wet roads, but no serious injuries through Wednesday evening.
As snow continued to pile up, so did the number of car crashes. Metro Police have been working several accidents since the snow began to fall.
One included a pickup truck that had rolled over about 7:15 p.m. in the southbound lane in the 2300 block of Green Valley Parkway outside of the Wild Horse Estate Apartments. The pickup truck knocked down two small trees before it came to a stop in front of the street light. The vehicle rolled once and was on its side, perpendicular to the traffic, blocking the lanes.
At 7:55 p.m., Metro officers were working 26 accidents with four injuries, a hit-and-run, nine other traffic accidents and 11 traffic problems, which range from a stalled car to traffic light outages. The number of traffic incidents decreased into the night as fewer cars were on the roads.
Metro updates its traffic site every 15 minutes with accidents and traffic problems officers are currently working. Officer Jay Rivera said the most common accident officers are seeing involve cars colliding into other vehicles from behind, mostly at traffic lights.
There had been no fatalities through Wednesday evening, he said.
“People are use to following at a certain distance in dry conditions and are following at that same distance in these wet conditions and then rear-ending other cars," Rivera said.
"People aren't used to the snow," Officer Barbara Morgan said. "You need to drive the way conditions dictate."
Metro Police reported 18 wrecks between 2:15 and 3:25 p.m., including two hit-and-runs.
"People are driving silly," Morgan said. "They need to just slow down."
The Nevada Highway Patrol reported two crashes in the Henderson area during the same time frame — one at U.S. 95 and Wagon Wheel Drive and another at U.S. 95 and Horizon Drive. Additionally, U.S. 95 to Searchlight was closed beginning at Railroad Pass.
Motorists traveling to California and outside the Las Vegas Valley were finding major delays on Interstate 15 and other highways.
The Nevada Department of Transportation reported the highway was closed in both direction between Primm and Baker, Calif., because of snowy weather. Officials also said U.S. 95 was closed from the California line to U.S. 93 because of a traffic accident, and State Road 163, State Road 164 and State Road 165 were closed.
NDOT will be deicing bridges and ramps on U.S. 95 and I-15 during the night.
Blue Diamond Highway (SR 160) was closed and motorists were advised to detour using U.S. 95 north to SR 160 south to access Pahrump. Chains, snow tires, or four-wheel drive vehicle restrictions are in place for Mountain Springs and Mount Charleston.
North Las Vegas officials were urging motorists to stay off the streets.
“Motorists should slow down and be aware of their surroundings to avoid slamming on the breaks or jerking the steering wheel on frozen roads,” public works director Qiong Liu said. “These actions could cause a vehicle to veer or slide out of control, posing a risk to the driver and other vehicles on the road.”
The Nevada Highway Patrol was preparing to close Interstate 515 southbound at Railroad Pass, blocking traffic into Boulder City for all but Boulder City residents, Police Chief Thomas Finn said. In addition, traffic along U.S. 93 from Hoover Dam into Boulder City was to be diverted, Finn said.
Traffic will be routed onto Lake Shore Road and through Henderson to get to the Las Vegas area, National Park Service spokesman Andrew Munoz said. Finn said Boulder City residents would be allowed through.
The Regional Transportation Commission has closed a portion of its 402 Route from Nevada State College to Boulder City, and officials cautioned that other bus routes that serve higher elevations may be detoured or delayed as well.
"It can't make it to Boulder City because of the road closures," spokesman Tracy Bower said.
A change of scenery
As Daniel Florez, a pharmacy employee at the CVS Pharmacy on Maryland Parkway and Silverado Ranch Boulevard, scraped a couple of inches of snow off the top of his car using a notebook, he said the snow was a nice change from the usual scenery.
"We were staring out the window all day saying 'I hope it sticks, I hope it sticks,'" he said.
He was, however, a little worried about the drive to his home in the Blue Diamond Road and Durango Road area that he would have to make at the end of his shift.
"It's a little scary out there," he said. "I don't know, Las Vegas people aren't used to this. I hope they can handle it."
J.T. Trainer, a Silverado-area resident who was leaving CVS as the snow piled up, said having grown up in Alaska and in Washington, where his dad used to take him out to do donuts on the snow-covered roads, he was not so much worried about himself, but was concerned about how other people were driving.
"I've seen three car accidents just on my way home from work," he said.
Two were on the freeway and another was when someone was trying to make a turn and slid into a pole, he said.
The weather prompted the city of Henderson to close city offices at 3 p.m. Wednesday. The city announced this morning that offices will resume regular operations today, however, recreation centers won't open until 8 a.m. The Henderson Safekey and Teen Scene sites are closed because of the Clark County school closures.
Outside the Summerlin Library on Dec. 17, Becker Middle School students Aaron Zambrano and Emre Keskintepe were holding up plastic bags collecting snowflakes.
The two 13-year-olds were just like thousands of other local residents taking in the rare snowstorm that struck the Las Vegas Valley.
“They’re pretty big flakes,” Aaron said. “We’re trying to have a snowball fight.”
Emre said he had seen snow before, but never like this in Summerlin.
“It’s weird to see snow covering the palm trees,” Emre said.
At the Boca Park shopping center near the corner of Rampart Boulevard and Charleston Boulevard, Casey Greenberg and her friend Thomas Jokerst watched the falling snow while having dinner at the Kona Grill.
“I think it’s amazing,” said Jokerst, a resident of San Francisco who was in town visiting friends. “I haven’t seen snow in like 15 years.”
“I’ve lived here for 17 years and this is freakish,” Greenberg said. “It snows every once in awhile, but only an inch or so. Nothing like this.”
Clark County has five daytime warming stations open through Friday. The locations are Catholic Charities (7 a.m. to 4 p.m.), 1501 N. Las Vegas Blvd.; Salvation Army (6 a.m. - 7 p.m.), 33 W. Owens Ave.; Cambridge Recreation Center (7 a.m. to 6 p.m.), 3930 Cambridge St.; Dula Gym (7 a.m. - 6 p.m.), 441 E. Bonanza Road; and Valley View Rec Center (7 a.m. - 6 p.m.), 500 Harris St. in Henderson. The area’s night shelters are Catholic Charities; the Las Vegas Rescue Mission, 480 W Bonanza Road; Salvation Army; and Shade Tree (for women only).
Forecast and snow reports
The snow is expected to end from west to east this morning and clouds will decrease this afternoon, according to the weather service's hazardous outlook this morning for Southern Nevada.
Another storm system will bring gusty winds into the area Friday and into Saturday but won't produce as much precipitation as the current storm, forecasters said.
Still another storm will arrive in the area on Monday or Tuesday, bringing another chance of precipitation and gusty winds.
Here is a summary of snow reports from Clark County from the weather service:
• 5:15 p.m., a weather service employee reported 0.1 inch of snow was sticking on the Strip on unpaved surfaces by the Circus Circus Casino.
• 5:15 p.m., 5 inches of snow was measured by a weather service employee near Wagon Wheel and U.S. Highway 95 about five miles west northwest of Boulder City.
• 5:30 p.m., around an inch of snow was sticking on the grass by the MGM Grand as well as on nonpaved surfaces by the Luxor, according to a weather service employee.
• 5:30 p.m., 11 inches of snow was measured at Mount Charleston by a co-op weather observer.
• 6:23 p.m., 3 inches of snow was measured in Henderson by the wife of a weather service employee.
• 6:40 p.m., 4 inches of snow was measured by a weather service employee in south Las Vegas.
• 8:34 p.m., 2.5 inches of snow was measured by a trained spotter near the Boulder Station Casino.
• 8:40 p.m., between 3 and 5 inches of snow was measured in Henderson near Heather and College by a spotter. The spotter also reported several separate vehicles crashed into walls along Interstate 215.
• 8:54 p.m., 7 inches of snow was measured in a residential neighborhood of Henderson near Black Mountain, around 2,700 feet in elevation.
• 8:58 p.m., 1.6 inches of snow was measured by a spotter near Desert Inn and Hollywood.
• 9:08 p.m., 8 inches of snow was measured in the far southeast part of Henderson by a weather service employee near Wagon Wheel and U.S. 95.
• 9:50 p.m., 3.6 inches of snow had fallen at the weather service office in Las Vegas on Dean Martin Road.
• 10 p.m., 6 inches was recorded by a trained weather spotter three miles south-southeast of Henderson.
• 10:30 p.m., 1.7 inches of snow was measured on the Strip at the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada" Sign.
-- Sun and Home News staffers contributing to this report were Dave Clark, Amanda Finnegan, Jeff Pope, Cydney Cappello, Kyle Hansen, Cara McCoy, Jean Reid Norman, Mary Manning, Ryan Greene, Ashley Livingston, Cassie Tomlin, Ray Brewer, Steve Silver, Tim Thiele, Evelio Contreras, Emily Richmond, Jeff O’Brien, Steve Green, Tim Richardson and Dave Toplikar.
