LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Three weeks after Tropical Storm Hilary devastated the Mt. Charleston area, some residents are still waiting for access to running water.
Channel 13's Paulina Bucka spoke with emergency crews, residents, and area officials about the recovery and rebuilding process.
On August 21, Mt. Charleston resident Arash Aalam watched as his neighborhood turned into a running river as heavy downpours dumped hours of rain on the area. "The water would subside, and then all of a sudden, it would swell up."
Matthew Hibschman, a volunteer firefighter, says he saw the aftermath of gas tanks being "torn out of the ground" by flash floods.
Aalam and Hibschman are neighbors and volunteer firefighters.
"You’d be surprised how much ground can slide away when we were trying to get out of the water," Hibschman said. "There's a house on the side of the road and the gentleman's wife was 9 months pregnant. We were trying to get her out of the water, and we had to stand on an embankment collapsing into this trench."
On Wednesday, the area looked much drier — but while 80% of the mountain's drinking water has been restored, the same cannot be said for Old Town.
"We don't have running water, but we’re working on that," Aalam said. "So what we’ve done is entered the third world, and now we have a big container that we fill up, and we’ve modernized it so there's a pump that runs into the house."
Aalam added, "We’ve all kind of passed around this water design system, and now several neighbors are doing it too."
Mario Gomez, an engineer with the Nevada Department of Transportation, says the damage to county roads like these will have to go through separate funding. However, repairs to our highways are still in effect.
Gomez said, "We estimated the damage to be at most 5 million dollars. We are trying to stay within that budget, but there is a lot of damage to multiple sections of highway."
NDOT told Channel 13 that they hope to have part of that highway that's been closed for several weeks reopened by early October.
