The Law of unintended consequences strikes again.
The 40-second cellphone video, released Thursday by the Nevada Department of Public Safety two days after the Las Vegas Review-Journal had requested it, was taken from a berm atop Trench No. 11 overlooking the soil cap of Trench No. 14.
Trench No. 14 is where containers of low-level radioactive waste were buried in part of a pit the size of a football stadium in the 1970s.
Authorities shut down a 140-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 95 for nearly 24 hours because of the fire and flash floods during Sunday's heavy rains in Nye County. Beatty is about 117 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
State Fire Marshal Chief Peter Mulvihill said Tuesday investigators don't know yet what caused the "energetic burning" in that pit Sunday but whatever caught fire below the surface of the unlined, clay terrain "definitely burned very hot."
The state's public safety team decided to allow the fire to burn itself out instead of trying to douse it because they didn't want to put water on any material that might be reactive to water, fearing that could potentially exacerbate the problem.