Gov. Brian Sandoval tours site of bomb attack in Lincoln County
PANACA — Gov. Brian Sandoval met with Lincoln County commissioners at the local middle school and held a town-hall-style meeting with the community’s volunteer first responders at the fire station Friday morning, as he toured the site of Wednesday’s bomb attack in this small, close-knit town.
“It’s a privilege for me to be here to help you with anything you need,” Sandoval said at the fire station. “It makes me proud to be governor. It’s a great state, and you all are what makes it great. I love my Nevada family.”
Those gathered at the fire station discussed the response to the bombing and the lessons the town learned in its aftermath.
The town was so congested with neighbors and friends trying to get to the scene that it made it difficult for some first responders to reach the fire station and the scene. Attendees floated the idea of building a road to connect the fire station to U.S. Highway 93 and getting state support to make it happen.
“I know somebody,” Sandoval responded, eliciting laughter from the crowd.
Also discussed was the town’s reverse 911 system, which sends out emergency alerts, and the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office smartphone app — neither of which was activated during the response but could have guided residents to shelter in place rather than head to the bombing site.
Commissioners said they hoped the incident would rekindle the county’s interest in a community emergency response team. The volunteer team was created after 9/11 but fell by the wayside in recent years because of a lack of interest.
One woman said her 11-year-old daughter was terrified by the bombing and refused to leave her side.
“I’ve got a 12-year-old, so I can imagine how that would affect her,” Sandoval replied.
The American Red Cross has been going door to door throughout Panaca to offer counseling services.
After the meeting, Sandoval toured the bombing site and met with members of the Cluff family, whose home was targeted by the bomber. On Friday, they were cleaning up in the rear of their property and dealing with livestock they had there.
The governor said afterward that he was struck by the magnitude of what happened, and he was thankful that no one was injured aside from the bomber, who has been identified as Glenn Franklin Jones, 59.
Sandoval said he heard about the bombing while he was at a national governors meeting in Iowa. “I knew immediately after that I had to come home.”
Most of the families living near the blast site were able to return to their homes late Thursday night, but a few families were still displaced Friday because their homes were not inhabitable. They are staying with friends and relatives.
“We may not be rich in resources, but we’re rich in family,” County Commissioner Varlin Higbee said.
Officials are using a state victims’ fund to provide evacuees with basic needs like food and shelter, the governor said.
Wendell Cowart lives next door to the Cluffs. He was settling in to eat dinner Wednesday night when the blasts blew out his windows and his front door, filling his home with black smoke.
He’s staying with his sister for the time being.
“It’s not an overnight fix,” he said, adding that he was thankful his neighbors weren’t hurt. “Everybody was in the right place at the right time.”
The Cluffs’ other next-door neighbor, Glen Wadsworth, was mowing his lawn and listening to his iPod when he saw the explosion.
“Their kids, two of them, had been riding their bikes all evening,” he said, standing next to the mower where he had left it Wednesday night.
Wadsworth saw a light-colored car turn around in front of the Cluff residence and back up to the house but didn’t think anything of it. He thought it might have been the family’s silver SUV.
Moments later, he saw a man walking alongside the driver’s side of the car “and then this orange fireball erupts.”
Wadsworth ran inside, grabbed his cellphone and ran back out front. He walked to the front of the Cluffs’ and saw the family’s SUV with the hatchback still open and a purse resting on the center console of the front seat.
He dialed 911 and was pacing back and forth in front of the Cluffs’ house, looking for one of the homeowners, thinking they might be dead, when the second explosion happened.
Walking across his half-mowed lawn Friday afternoon, Wadsworth pointed to the tree bordering his and the Cluffs’ property, where he said he found body parts and chunks of metal.
He and a neighbor also found pieces of a Glock, a derringer, a cellphone and a suspicious-looking pipe that was flattened on one end and had threads around the other.
“I’m not saying for sure it was part of the bomb, but there’s nothing in a car like that,” Wadsworth said. “It’s really a good thing nobody got hurt but him.”
Three teenagers walked up and down the street where the explosion happened, one of them pointing to where police had found shrapnel and other evidence.
“Was it the one guy who smiled all the time?” one of the boys asked. “It was him? No! He was literally the nicest guy I met, always happy.”
Las Vegas Review-Journal writers Henry Brean and Blake Apgar contributed to this report. Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Find @WesJuhl on Twitter. Contact Kimber Laux at klaux@reviewjournal.com or at 702-383-0283. Find @lauxkimber on Twitter.
