State paving crew left in limbo

By Emily Richmond

Thursday, May 29, 2003 | 11:18 a.m.

For nearly three hours after the Moulin Rouge blaze began, a state paving crew working on Bonanza Road inched toward the burning landmark.

By 4 a.m. the crew, which was resurfacing the road between Interstate 15 and Martin Luther King Boulevard, reached its limit.

"We paved right up to the back of the fire trucks, then we could couldn't go any farther," said Jill Sims, resident engineer for the Nevada Transportation Department, who was supervising the crew from Las Vegas Paving Corp. "The hoses were running across the road and the smoke was so thick, you couldn't see two feet in front of you."

But the crew couldn't just call it a day.

By the time they reached the fire trucks, the crew had already milled down a section of the road by 5 inches, Brian Pringle, project manager for Las Vegas Paving Corp., said. That meant they had to wait.

"It's a safety issue. We can't let traffic run over that kind of drop-off," Pringle said this morning. "We can't leave the job unfinished, so our only option is to wait."

It costs about $1,000 an hour to keep a paving crew of eight waiting, Pringle said.

The crew was able to resume some work on the shoulder and right turn lane by about 7 a.m. The crew, which started at 9 p.m. Wednesday, had about three hours' work left when they were forced to stop, Pringle said.

Bob McKenzie, a Transportation Department spokesman, said this morning the cost of such delays are typically factored into the larger contract.

"In a contingency like this it's no one's fault," McKenzie said. "Hopefully they'll be able to finish up and get the lanes reopened as quickly as possible."