Officials still tallying damage from Friday's wild weather

The aftermath of Friday's severe thunderstorms includes damage from a tornado in Henderson to mud-clogged homes and businesses in Moapa Valley and Overton.

Henderson's land management Director Curt Chandler said the storm approached a 50-year event, meaning it might happen once every 50 years.

"We had a very intense storm," he said Monday, as city crews continued to assess damages from winds and flooding as calls continued to pour into City Hall.

"The biggest problem we had was people driving into floodwaters and then getting stuck," Chandler said. "They never seem to learn."

Emergency managers from one end of Southern Nevada to the other said they are still tallying the dollar damages from the series of storms that swept through the Las Vegas Valley and into the rural areas northeast last week.

The National Weather Service said Monday that damage to two buildings in Henderson came from a funnel cloud that touched down after meteorologists issued a tornado warning about 12:27 p.m. Friday.

"It will go into the record books as a tornado," Chief Meteorologist Larry Jensen said.

Jensen took a helicopter tour Saturday of the MDE International Inc. building at 600 W. Sunset Road and the Texaco gas station a block away where a roof was blown off at MDE and Texaco's cinder block wall was destroyed.

No one was injured as the twister touched down, Jensen said. Several home video cameras captured funnel clouds that did not touch down around the valley, he added.

Most of the damage in Moapa Valley and Overton, rural communities about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas, occurred after heavy rains fell Friday.

Clark County Emergency Manager Robert Andrews said 13 homes suffered major damage in Overton, but most of the homeowners were insured. More than 220 people were evacuated from Moapa Valley and Hidden Valley, where the dairy there was surrounded by floodwaters after 1 a.m. Saturday. Waters subsided about 5 a.m.

"So far the damages are short of a state disaster declaration," Andrews said. If Gov. Bob Miller had declared the Moapa Valley a disaster area, residents would have been eligible for Small Business Administration assistance, he said.

While six Red Cross volunteers live in Overton, Executive Director Rick Diebold said he shuttled between the Stadium Mobile Home Park on the eastern end of Russell Road, which saw mobile homes moved by the floodwaters during Thursday's storm, to Moapa Valley on Friday through Sunday.

"We did see substantial damage," Diebold said.

It cost the Red Cross at least $25,000 to shelter those evacuated from Moapa and Overton, he said.

The Clark County Regional Flood Control District could not go up the Muddy River and California Wash to see how much rain fell, said hydrologist Tim Sutko. Sutko said he would try to measure the water levels after Tuesday.

"It's too muddy in the channels for me to get up there," he said.

Despite all the rain, officials say it is unlikely the 1998 storm season will surpass 1941, although some rain gauges measured up to 2 inches of rain on Friday.

Nevada records show 1941 as the wettest year to date with 10.72 inches of rainfall.

So far this year Southern Nevada has measured 6.37 inches of rain. Average rainfall in the Las Vegas Valley per year is 4.12 inches.

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