First flames, then fees: Tahoe evacuees report price gouging

STATELINE, Nev. (AP) — As fearful Lake Tahoe residents packed up belongings and fled a raging wildfire burning toward the California-Nevada border, some encountered an unexpected obstacle: price gouging.

A rideshare company quoted a fee of more than $1,500 to be transported from the smoke-choked ski resort at Heavenly Valley to the safety of Reno-Tahoe International Airport, about eight times the going rate. A Nevada hotel-casino outside the evacuation order zone advertised a two-night stay for $1,090.72, almost four times the midweek rate offered a day earlier.

Reports of price gouging routinely emerge during natural disasters and won newfound attention early in the pandemic, when some businesses tried to capitalize on panic amid demand for toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

While there is no federal law that bans it during emergencies, at least a dozen statehouses have addressed price gouging since last year, including Nevada and California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill banning the practice last September.

Unlike California though, a Nevada price gouging prohibition signed by Gov. Steve Sisolak in June doesn’t take effect until October. Its start date limits officials from policing the issue and taking action beyond promising to monitor it.

“We hope that good merchants are not going to partake in price gouging,” Sisolak said Tuesday in Carson City, where ash particles from the Caldor Fire rained from the sky. “They’re going to partake in trying to make their goods available to the widest group of people they possibly can."

Officials in both states publicly warned businesses in the shadow of the massive blaze against price gouging, with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, his Nevada counterpart Aaron Ford and U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei asking consumers to...