Nevada Wildfire 2026: 42,000 Evacuated As Human-Caused Hawk Fire Threatens Reno | N18G

At this hour, some 90,000 people are being asked to evacuate. The fast-moving hawk fire has exploded, now covering more than 13,000 acres. Nevada's governor declaring a state of emergency in Washoe County. Three civilians and three first responders have been injured. There's also reports of multiple power outages. Joining us now is Reno's Fire Department Chief, David Cochran. Chief, appreciate you taking the time to join us. So as I noted there, we've been told this is human activity. Is there any indication at this hour that this was intentional? We don't have any indication that it's intentional. We have confirmed, like you said, that it's human-caused. But the specific cause has not been identified yet. We, as I noted, some 13,000 acres, 90,000 people being asked to evacuate. When I last looked, it looked like containment was at 0%. Is that still the case? That is the case. We have crews out working hard all around the fire today. We expect more erratic fire behavior as the winds come up in the afternoon. But no expected containment yet. What has this been like for you, given how quickly it seems to have spread, the way it's exploding? Do you have what you need in terms of resources? No, unfortunately, across the West, we're at what's called Preparedness Level 5, which means everything that's available has been committed. Fortunately for us, this is the top priority in the Great Basin region for resources. So we are getting the resources we're requesting. But like everywhere across the West, with these large, large fires and the amount of resources needed, it's hard to address all the needs throughout the West. But this is a priority. And as always, life safety and firefighter safety is going to be our number one priority. Yeah, absolutely. In terms of that, we've seen that three civilians, three first responders have already been injured. Do you know if that was directly from the fire? Was that in the process of evacuations? I'm not sure how much detail you have on those. I don't have a lot of detail, although the firefighter injuries were related to the fire, of course. A couple of the civilian injuries were as well. Fortunately, to my reporting, none of them are life-threatening. That is good news. I mean, as you noted, you are on high alert. You know, unfortunately, you are well-versed in how to deal with wildfires. Certainly, the season has been incredibly difficult across the West. Can you put into perspective, though, what you are seeing with the Hawk fire? We're seeing some incredible erratic fire behavior, that behavior that you, well, many have never seen before. The other thing that's happening is it's extending for longer periods. We're getting that erratic fire behavior into the nighttime and into the early morning hours, which is unusual. And that's what's making this so hard to control and so hard to contain. And, you know, for people who aren't familiar, why is that so unusual? Because typically overnight, especially in Nevada where I'm working, you'll get the temperature will drop, the winds will drop, and the fire kind of settles down. And that allows us to really get after it. It's very hard to attack the fire when there's high wind, high heat in the middle of the day. But when it settles down and we can get after it, that's when we can ramp up that containment. But if the winds don't drop, the temperature doesn't drop, and you're getting that erratic fire behavior, it just makes it harder to get your arms around a fire of this size and this magnitude. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. As I noted, 90,000 people have been asked to evacuate. Do you anticipate that that number could go even higher? It certainly could. And I only qualify that because fire is its own master. So we don't, we predict it, but we can't control it. But we're hoping that the way the fire is expected to move today, the threat will be to populated or less populated areas so that evacuation number will remain steady or ideally will go down, but probably not another day or two. Given how, to your point, how erratic this fire is, how quickly moving it is, the way it sort of exploded, have you been able to get a real sense yet of the damage that's being seen on the ground? Not yet. And I always warn people, you know, especially early in an event like this, you get a lot of reports, but they're typically inaccurate, not by design, that, you know, there's such a fast moving, such a dynamic situation that it's hard to get complete, accurate information. So as things settle down and we get actual boots on the ground, professionals evaluating what the damage is, we don't like to give out any specific details. But there certainly has been damage and structures lost, and we'll know more as the fire progresses. Yeah. Well, I hope that the next time we hear from you we're able to talk about some more containment. I know this is a lot. I know you're prepared, but still, I'm really grateful for you taking the time to join us during such a difficult period. Thank you. We do have some breaking news that we want to share with you. Authorities now believe the uncontained wildfire burning in northwest Reno was caused by human activity. We've also learned six people have suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Officials have been asking some 90,000 residents to leave now before it is too late. Some new video to show you coming into us here shows these flames rapidly spreading along a Nevada hillside. Washoe County remains under a state of emergency. This fast-moving hog fire really exploded. It's now covering more than 13,000 acres at zero percent containment. Several structures have burned. Thousands are without power. Hillary Schieve is the mayor of Reno and joins us now. So, Mayor, can you just bring us up to speed in terms of what you know at this hour? Are we still at zero percent containment? Yes. Thank you so much, Erica. Right now we are at zero percent containment. But people should also know that that doesn't mean that we're making headway, which is good. Overnight they really did a phenomenal job. The firefighters just held the line, and that's what we really needed them to do. Right now the wind has been fairly calm, which is obviously in our favor. But, you know, we start to get later into the day and worry that they will pick up. And as you know, fire can create its own weather. And so it can get extremely erratic. But we are very lucky because we have a type one emergency management team that's here now. Governor Lombardo signed our emergency declaration, which is fantastic. So it really brings in a ton of resources. The National Guard is now here. We have all jurisdictions on scene with over 1,000 firefighters here. We've just been just so grateful for the response that we've had. And so we're just doing everything we can to keep our residents safe. We have over 42,000 residents right now evacuated, looking at another 45,000 or so residents that may need to be evacuated. So we are all hands on deck here. Those are massive numbers. You know, 42,000 already evacuated, another 40,000 being asked to do so. Where are they going? Well, right now we have the Red Cross, who has been phenomenal. And we have a massive convention center here. So we are standing that up. And there are thousands of people that are coming. And, you know, Reno has one of the best communities. People are opening their hearts, their doors every which way for our animals, you know, family, friends, loved ones. And the generosity has just been outpouring. Remember, we are also very lucky to be sort of in a very tourist-centric city. So, you know, there are hotels that are doing a lot on the ground as well. And so we're lucky that we have some of this capacity. But, you know, that's why it's so important to get on top of this fire as quickly as we can, because we want to make sure that we are saving, you know, all the lives that we possibly can and making sure that everyone's safe. I think the other thing that people may not realize is we are just coming out of the bug fire. So when you have two catastrophic events back-to-back, it gets pretty extenuous. Yeah, it can, especially for all the crews fighting that fire. I was speaking with the fire chief last hour. I mean, you were talking about how they were able to get a handle on some stuff overnight. The nighttime has been, though, more of a challenge, right, than we've seen, because conditions haven't changed every time in the way that they would like. You talked about the resources you have. I know you've got a lot going on. Are there further reinforcements or anything else that you need in this moment that we should know about? Well, we have been so lucky. Nevada is very, very connected to our federal partners, all of our federal partners, stepped in, got FEMA grants, been connected constantly with the governor. Everyone is doing what they can. We have a very strong National Guard. I just, you know, I feel blessed as a mayor that I get this kind of support. I know not a lot of cities do get this kind of support. And so it's just been all hands on deck. Everyone has been working together. What do you need? Residents, or what do you need? What do you need? That's the wonderful thing is we all come together in a big way in the biggest little city when we need everyone the most. But I'm very, very fortunate that all of our federal partners, our local elected officials, all work really well together, especially in catastrophic incidents like this. You know, I noted just before we came to you, authorities have said they do believe this was caused by human activity. Is there any further indication as to whether that was intentional? Well, we don't know at this moment. It's certainly under investigation. But I think people forget that 90 percent of fires are created by humans. And, you know, especially in dry conditions during summer, and we've been in red flag warnings, it is a very, very serious event. And so we're continuing to investigate it to find out exactly what the cause is. And, you know, we take that extremely serious, and we will hold anyone accountable. But I think for cities across the country, especially if you're in these wildland fire areas, it's important to message that most of these are caused by humans. And so we have to continue to message that we've got to keep communities safe by letting them know it's unacceptable when we're causing these fires, you know, ourselves. Tens of thousands of people in Nevada forced to evacuate as a fast-moving, uncontained wildfire is torching northwestern Reno. We have new video to show you, which, as you can see, this is image of the flames spreading rapidly down a hillside. Washoe County, under a state of emergency at this hour, the Hawk Fire, as it's known, has now exploded to more than 13,000 acres. A number of structures have already burned. Thousands are without power. Reno's police chief, police chief, rather, Cory Solferino, is with us now. Chief, it's good to have you with us this hour. Last I spoke with officials, this was still at zero percent containment. Is that where we stand right now? Correct. Thank you for the invite. So zero percent containment. What is your biggest challenge right now? Our biggest challenge right now is, honestly, maintaining the evacuation zones, ensuring that people are not waiting until it's evacuation now time to start preparing. So we're asking our public, we're asking everybody to be prepared. Don't wait for that evacuation order to happen before you start gathering those documents, grabbing your medicine, and getting out and creating the chaos. The last thing that we want to do is have tragedy strike our roadways as we're trying to get our people out of that area. So the heroic efforts of our public safety officials and our amazing firefighters are able to save property lives and tackle this fire and get some containment on it. And the next 48 hours will be very, very important to our success. I mean, the numbers are really something. I spoke with the mayor last hour, the mayor of Reno. She said 42,000 people had evacuated, some 40,000 they were hoping would. She noted, too, it's helpful that Reno, of course, is a heavily touristed area, a lot of hotel rooms. But logistically, when you talk about that, getting tens of thousands of people to safety in a short amount of time. When you talk about people preparing ahead of time, how have folks who are evacuating, how have they been dealing with the orders and responding to those requests when you encounter them? What we're trying to do is we're trying to message unified through all of the different public safety professionals that we have through fire, through the Washoe County Sheriff's Office, the Reno Police Department. And now the Hawk Fire Web page is putting those areas on alert. So they're planning ahead. They're getting everything that they need. So when we call that order, they can get out or they can evacuate ahead of time. Last night, we had some issues where we had to shut down the freeway where the fire overran the freeway. So we only had one way of egress pushing people south back into the city limits that allowed them an opportunity to not go into the path of the fire and create another issue. Every year we see a tragedy that strikes across our nation. Literally, when people are stuck holding on to the last minute to evaluate, we can replace vehicles, we can replace property, we can replace homes, but we can't replace individual lives. And we really want to focus on the lives of our public safety professionals, professionals and our citizens. We don't want to put their lives at risk for folks who, as we see, as you point out in these tragedies, whether it is a wildfire, a hurricane, you know, waiting until the last minute does put those first responders at risk. We have been told that this is human activity. I know it's under investigation. Any any further information at this hour about what that activity was? Not at this time. They're still looking at the initial origin of the fire to determine. We do know that it was human or manmade in this instance, but I think you brought up a very, very important topic just earlier that I want to key in on. We just obviously our region is subject to wildland fires, and we just recently finished containment on another one just two weeks previously. The difference between that 1 and this 1, that 1 was more in our rural community, so we had a fraction of the population. This is coming within the city of Reno limits, densely populated. So, while we have 45,000, approximately people currently evacuated from their homes, we have an additional 45 or 42,000 plus in the next year of evacuation. So, getting 90,000 people out of that area and ensuring that our public safety professionals have the ability to do their job, that our fire safety professionals have the ability to get in and out of areas to protect structures to protect life. That's our biggest message moving forward is don't wait until the evacuation order start planning ahead now.