Officials hoped to have the track bed and rails repaired by Wednesday for freight service to resume on the busy Las Vegas-to-Salt Lake City main line. Union Pacific Railroad service was suspended while crews repaired track that was undermined and washed out near Moapa.
It usually carries about 20,000 vehicles a day.
Transportation officials said the damaged stretch of I-15 near Moapa could be closed for several days for repairs. We've never had water like that before," said David Muns, a resident of Moapa, where more than four inches of rain fell in two hours. "It's a near-miss."Ī subdivision with about 30 homes flooded in Overton, several miles downstream from Moapa, and Clark County firefighters counted 18 rescues in the area, many involving submerged cars. "We saw it right at the cusp and it didn't go over," said Erin Neff, spokeswoman for the Clark County Regional Flood Control District. Officials say large-scale damage was narrowly averted when rushing water nearly overwhelmed the banks of the swollen Muddy and Virgin rivers. No damage estimate was immediately available, but Clark County spokeswoman Stacey Welling said officials were preparing to ask county lawmakers next Tuesday for an emergency declaration.Ī state disaster assessment team was due in the Moapa and Logandale area on Wednesday to begin determining if the region would qualify for funds from the state. "It'll be a couple of hours out of their way," said Hyde, who noted the remnant red mud all around her store. New California law: Let teens sleep in on school days highways to Panaca, Nevada, and then to Cedar City, Utah. The storm, spawned by seasonal monsoon moisture and the remnants of Tropical Storm Norbert, dumped heavy rain throughout the Southwest and set a single-day rainfall record in Phoenix.īut the sun was out Tuesday in the rural southern Nevada towns of Moapa and Glendale, about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas.Ĭonvenience store manager Penny Hyde spent a harried day advising motorists who waited through delays and detours to reach Glendale that to get back on I-15 they'd need to take another roundabout route on two-lane state and U.S. Water also scoured out part of a main rail freight line and swelled a river so high that a Utah national park was briefly shuttered.
Ripples spread from the closure of the main road from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, as crews began mopping up from Monday's pouring rain and rushing runoff. Tourists and truckers were told to prepare for another day of disruptive detours Wednesday around a closed stretch of busy Interstate 15 (I-15) in southern Nevada that crumbled in chunks during intense flash flooding.