Friday, July 20, 2018 | 7:40 p.m.
Conditions inside a northwest valley house Wednesday sweltered so severely that fire alarms on a second floor melted off the ceiling while light fixtures and other plastic materials disintegrated, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue announced Friday.
On the first floor lay a woman’s body and the metal remains of a couch where the smoldering blaze had sizzled. Despite the fire's intensity, insulation prevented deadly smoke and gases from escape the home.
It wasn’t until the next day that the tragic incident would be unearthed when family members of the woman showed up to her house in the Desert Shores development, fire officials said.
Crews were dispatched about 3:33 p.m. to the area of Cheyenne Avenue and Buffalo Drive and encountered what the family discovered a few minutes before: walls coated with soot and black smoke, and the woman’s body on the kitchen floor, officials said. It was later determined that she died from smoke inhalation.
While the cause of the blaze is yet to be determined, it seems to be accidental in nature, officials said. It sparked on or near a couch in the living room. “Instead of burning in open flames, (the couch) smoldered for a considerable amount of time.”
And no smoke or flames seeped to the exterior. Instead, the woman was entrapped with them, officials said. But about 10:20 p.m. Wednesday, someone “reported a faint smell of something burning in the neighborhood … but there was no obvious signs of smoke or fire and they could not determine what it was or where it came from.”
This type of blaze is “extremely rare,” officials wrote. It occurs in Las Vegas average once every five years.
Victims are typically overcome by smoke before they can yell for help or escape, officials said.
Lack of oxygen prevents a “fire to burst into flames so it smolders instead,” officials said. “After an extended period of time, the smoldering stops when the item is consumed and conditions inside the home begin to return to normal except for damage left behind.”
This time around, the damage was deadly.
