Carson City was hit with $1 million to $1.5 million in property damages from last weekend’s storm, city official say.
That’s the estimate after a two teams, and two drones, spent Monday assessing damage throughout the city.
“In January we had 200 map points or incidents and 150 had damage totaling about $3.3 million. Two days ago we had 60 to 80 map points and probably 50 had damage,” said John Arneson, interim Carson City fire chief.
And another storm is expected to arrive Thursday and stay for a week with a greater than 50 percent chance of rain or snow every day.
The city will wait to see whether it needs to reactivate the non-emergency flood phone number or emergency operations center, but several stations where people can fill their own sandbags will be set up again.
“We encourage anyone who had problems in the last storm to sandbag again,” said Nick Marano, city manager. “The ground is saturated. It’s going to come down city streets just like last weekend.”
That included King Street, which was a virtual river, said Marano, with water flowing down to the Carson Mall and filling up the parking lot on Carson Street.
Marano thinks melting snowpack worsened the impact of the most recent storm so the good news for later this week is the snowpack, except at the highest elevations, is already gone.
Arneson said much of the harm in this most recent storm was to parks, recreation and open space, which had an already estimated $1.67 million in damages from the January event.
Nevada Division of Forestry crews helped the city sandbag a few homes in the Empire Ranch area.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do this without their help,” said Arneson.
Arenson and Marano suggested people take common sense precautions before the next storm: Keep car gas tanks full, have flashlights ready in case of a power outage, shop for food ahead of time, and be sure to have prescriptions filled.
“If you don’t have to go out during the event don’t go out,” said Arneson.
He also encouraged anyone who sees property damage to report it via Carson Connect on the city’s web site, carson.org.
Drones owned by the fire department and Public Works were used Monday, too, to gauge damage and the assessment teams are working all week, until they may have to start all over again next week.
A resolution declaring another state of emergency was signed on Friday after the city manager drove around the city collecting signatures from each member of the Board of Supervisors.
“I should probably have one ready from now until the end of May,” said Marano.
On Feb. 9, Gov. Brian Sandoval sent a letter to President Donald Trump requesting he declare a major disaster for the State of Nevada from the January storm.
The state is seeking federal assistance for $14.82 million of assessed damages, including $3.3 million in Carson City.
