RENO — Even a raging wildfire has a hard time quieting Vice President Joe Biden.

Known for his long-winded speechifying, Biden had just captured the attention of his audience inside the Galena High School gymnasium Thursday when the fire began to close in.

He’d had to work hard to get there. His plane had been diverted to a naval air field 80 miles away. Wind gusts up to 100 mph had made it impossible for Air Force Two to land in Reno. As a motorcade rushed him to town, his staff worked to keep bored audience members nearby so the chairs would be filled when he finally arrived, two hours behind schedule.

Northern Nevada was a mess: a 15-car pileup choked traffic north of town, tractor-trailers blown over in the wind blocked the highway south of town and the brush fire had just ignited in the hills south of the high school.

Finally Biden appeared, bent over the lectern, fingers clasped in front of his face. He kept his voice low, conveying practiced emotion as he folded himself into the working man’s persona that might appeal to Nevadans suffering through the recession.

The room was silent as he repeated one of his favorite campaign stump stories about his father making the “longest walk a parent can make” to tell his children he would have to move away from them for a year in order to find work.

He described the pain a parent feels when they realize they don’t have the money to send their children to college.

“There is nothing worse for a parent than to know that they can’t help,” he said, speaking barely above a stage whisper. “They can’t help.”

But before Biden could pivot to a description of what the Obama administration wants to do to help with the cost of college, a cadre of Secret Service agents jogged up to the stage to alert Biden that the building was being evacuated as the fire pushed toward the high school.

“Uh, guys?” Biden said when he returned to the microphone. Some in the audience laughed. One audience member whined “No!” when it became apparent the vice president would be cut short.

“Here’s the deal,” Biden continued. “As we were riding in, I watched a bunch of fire trucks drive by. Apparently you have a fire in the nearby hills.”

Concerned about evacuating the building, as well as what Biden’s motorcade would do to traffic from the hundreds of evacuees fleeing the fire, Biden’s staff told him he could speak for five more minutes.

Biden, however, isn’t known for brevity and he already felt bad for being late. His visit to Reno also was meant to energize Democrats, who will caucus Saturday to formally nominate Obama as the party’s candidate.

“Let me answer any question anybody asks,” he shouted.

He then launched into an extended answer to a question about the Stop Online Piracy Act as nervous audience members left the gymnasium to see a giant column of smoke towering over the school.

READ FULL STORY