Political Quotes

“I returned from Nevada this Sunday. On Saturday I had a briefing by the head of the Forest Service in Nevada. We thought things were going very well with the fires in Nevada, and they were. Progress was being made--limited but progress was being made. But since that time the fires have gotten much worse. Not everyone can see this, but I have a picture--of course, I didn't get this until early this morning and didn't have a chance to enlarge it so we could put it on an easel--but this is the beginning of the Las Vegas strip. This is downtown Las Vegas. It is called the Carpenter fire. You can see it burning. It is only about 10 miles from Las Vegas, maybe 12 at the most. We can see Mount Charleston, a 12,000-foot mountain. The flames are shooting above that. We don't get many clouds in southern Nevada, but the smoke cloud here is intense. One of my staff indicated that where she lives it is raining ash. This is a very devastating fire, and the firefighters are doing the very best they can in a very difficult situation. My thoughts go out to the thousands who have been evacuated from their homes in southern Nevada's Mount Charleston area--I think hundreds would be a better way to say this. Out where the Carpenter 1 fire is, as it is called, it has burned more than 30 square miles of forest and desert. My heart goes out to the first responders. They are working very hard in extremely rugged terrain.…”