The Nye County Commission voted to allocate more funds to the county Sheriff’s Office and Department of Emergency Management for fiscal year 2020.
The county incurred more than $363,000 in unbudgeted emergency expenditures during the “Storm Area 51” event spurred by social media last year.
Commissioner Debra Strickland suggested pursuing reimbursement from Facebook, where posts about the gathering started.
“If it were not for Facebook, we would never have had this come down," Strickland said, "They allowed those postings to stand against the federal government – a walk onto a federal site. They are the ones who allowed that, and I have not been on Facebook since they allowed that, I will let you know. Facebook is not our friend.”
The event started as a joke on Facebook, but it ended up drawing thousands of revelers to the area around the Nevada National Security Site in September 2019.
Nye and Lincoln Counties are still waiting for an official response from the state on related reimbursement requests.