Can people visit the storm tunnels that run under the Strip?
For anyone who hasn't heard about them, the "tunnels" are part of the storm drainage system that channels flood waters from the high (west) side of the valley to the lower (east) side, where the Las Vegas Wash funnels it all into Lake Mead. In total, there are more than 200 miles of in the flood-control system. Street runoff is collected via curbs and gutters, then carried water into underground storm drains that lead to large concrete channels. The channels collect water from the drains and detention basins (which provide temporary storage when more water pours into the valley than the system can handle; the basins fill during storms, then slowly divert the water to channels). In most places, the channels are uncovered, but where they meet roads or housing developments, storm waters are routed underground through four-sided concrete-box culverts.
Anyway, the tunnels, and the alternate universe found within them, were brought to light by Huntington Press author Matt O'Brien.
When he was managing editor of a now-defunct Las Vegas weekly, CityLife, O'Brien became intrigued by the story of a killer who'd eluded police by vanishing into the city's subterranean flood-control system. He followed in the footsteps of the psycho and found a host of people who reside in the storm drains underneath Las Vegas. He recorded his experiences in the internationally acclaimed best-selling book, Beneath the Neon.
As the book's subtitle, Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas, suggests, this unlit dank labyrinth is not a safe place and certainly not anywhere we'd recommend people visiting, unless you could arrange to be accompanied by an aficionado like Matt, who's spent more hours than he cares to remember down there over the past decade. (O'Brien founded a Shine A Light, a non-profit that provides water, food, clothes, blankets, drug counseling, and other services to the tunnel dwellers, but he no longer lives in Las Vegas.)
Not only are the tunnels extremely dark, but they're subject to the dangerous flash-flooding that they were constructed to relieve. Several known deaths have been recorded in recent years.
In addition, some of the homeless people living in the culverts and box channels, estimated to number as many as 700, suffer from mental illness and/or drug problems. And many people who don't have mental-health or drug issues and live in the tunnels prefer to have their privacy respected.
Thus, the storm drains are anything but some kind of tourist-friendly attraction with guided tours, like the Roman catacombs, and are in fact somewhere we'd strongly advise you to stay well away from.
