Fire and Rain in Shoshone

Fire and Rain in Shoshone

By Anne Stoll

So we had a great time this past weekend avoiding the Super Bowl and enjoying desert rain in Shoshone. The town is as friendly and clean as ever (compare to Baker, for the other extreme), and the whole area is even more amazingly beautiful when wet. And there was news from the Shoshone campground to share. Just over two weeks ago, they had a bad fire that truly scared everyone in town! A large, late-model fancy trailer parked there mysteriously caught fire (maybe a defective inverter, we were told). The couple who were inside at the time (yikes!) saw flames coming out of the electrical panel and fled outside to safety. Unfortunately they didn’t have time to grab the keys to their tow vehicle, a large pickup truck that soon also burned. Propane tanks were exploding, shooting flames high into the air and the trailer was engulfed in minutes. Good news, no one was hurt, the husband did grab his wallet, they have insurance and miraculously the fire did NOT spread to any other buildings! The camp host told us there were high winds that day and the embers were flying everywhere but amazingly, they hopped over the camp gathering-room and started torching the palm trees before three different volunteer fire companies arrived (from Tecopa, Pahrump and the National Park) and put multiple blazes out. Woohoo! See what we can do when we work together?                                      ~Anne & George