UPDATE – JUNE 16, 10:57 p.m.:

Nearly 69,981 NV Energy customers were without power Tuesday evening across Reno, parts of the North Valleys, the northwest area and as far south as Washoe Valley as crews investigated a widespread outage.

The outage also includes previously reported impacts in Sparks, according to NV Energy outage information.

The cause of the outages is listed as unknown and under investigation.

It is not immediately known whether the outage is related to fire-related deactivation in parts of east Sparks or if it is a separate incident.

Additional information was not immediately available.

ORIGINAL STORY – JUNE 16:

More than 8,100 NV Energy customers are without power in parts of Sparks as a vegetation fire in east Sparks continues to burn.

NV Energy listed the cause of the outage as unknown and under investigation, affecting ZIP codes 89431, 89434 and 89436.

NV Energy has deactivated power in the area due to the fire, according to Sparks Fire Department in an online post.

The fire is burning in the area of Geno Martini Parkway and Garda Court and has prompted evacuation orders for the Vecchio Drive area.

An evacuation shelter has been set up at the Sparks Library on 12th Street for residents impacted by the fire.

The situation remains active and is a developing story. Additional information was not immediately available.

I filmed on a burn on Harmony Ridge, above Nevada City yesterday with a newish private company called ‘[First Rain Land Stewardship](https://www.firstrainlandstewardship.com/)’. They run a thinning crew out of Nevada City and the owner is a CARX California State-Certified Burn Boss. I wanted to cover this burn because with all of the media attention on Cal Fire’s Putah Creek escaped burn last week, and after months of doomer ‘*2026 will be the worst fire season ever*’ reporting, it seems like many people are really anxious about the upcoming season, but that we aren’t really there, yet. Also, I feel like we need to push into burning WHENEVER THE CONDITIONS ARE APPROPRIATE, regardless of calendar dates.

We broadcast burned about 13 acres of mixed conifer that had been thinned last summer by First Rain. They had burned some of the piles last winter, but about 2/3 of the unit still had piles in it. Some of the piles were pretty large, but all of them burned down to the heavies within 10-15 minutes. The woods on the other sides of the property lines were scary-thick with heavy cedar reprod and needlecast manzanita (see photo 2, below)!

We had about 15 people which included the First Rain crew, 4 people from the new Nevada City Fuels Crew (paid out of a local bond measure), one person from the Nevada County RCD, and a couple guys from North San Juan VFD (?). Many of the people on the burn had previous firefighting and logging experience.

It got up into the 90s after lunch, but RHs stayed above 30% and we remained in prescription. There was not much wind or lift, so we got shaded a bit by our own smoke for most of the day. We had roads around about 1/2 of the burn, and a hoselay around the rest. We had 4 or 5 Type VI engines and a couple water trailers. All of the un-roaded lines were well burned-in by the time it heated up in the afternoon.

The duff was dry all the way down to mineral soil, but there was quite a bit of greenery in the forbs and grasses. The terrain was complex, due to lots of old mining disturbance, so they backed fire off all the little ridges between the old gullies, and got really good consumption on the duff and litter. There were a lot of piles in the gullies, and the heat from these may have killed some of the residual trees in the tighter gullies. It was freaking hot in there, and the heat lasted for a long time. It was a reminder that in our heaviest thickets, in places we can’t operate mechanically, removing fuels is really difficult – with the volume of overstocking we are facing in many places, pile burning can result in high mortality, even if you burn in the winter.

One benefit of having all the heat from the piles was that we got good indrafts to the center of the units, and there wasn’t much smoke for the holding crews.

Yesterday was the first day of the burn permit suspension in NEU. This project was done under a land management exemption, signed by the Unit Duty Officer.