It’s not often that a fire district must prepare for a known event with so many unknown factors. But that’s the situation facing the Lincoln County (Nevada) Fire Protection District and its fire chief/emergency manager, Eric Holt, now anticipating a massive influx of people to the remote area on Sept. 20, all due to a joke Facebook post.
The Facebook event, called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” proposed storming Nevada’s famed Area 51, a classified U.S. Air Force facility located within the Nevada Test and Training Range, so people could learn the truth about what happens beyond the gates. The post noted, “We can move faster than their bullets. Let’s see them aliens.”
The event ultimately generated 2 million accepted invitations, and while that number is certainly highly inflated, Chief Holt and his team have more than enough reason to believe that tens of thousands of people are about to descend upon Lincoln County.