Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Apartments destroyed

The American Red Cross opened a phone line for those displaced from their homes by the fire at Russell Road and Boulder Highway. (866) 438-4636.

A four-alarm fire sent flames up to 100 feet in the air Thursday night, destroying most of an apartment complex under construction and forcing authorities to evacuate a neighborhood off Boulder Highway.

"This is the largest structure fire I've seen," Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said as the fire roared behind him.

The blaze at the Firenze apartments at Russell Road and Boulder Highway grew from a two-alarm fire just after it was reported at 8:30 p.m. to a four-alarm fire less than an hour later. The flames jumped from one building to another, quickly consuming the complex.

"It jumped to one roof and that went up in one shot, boom," said John McFarland, who watched the fire from his house on High Steed Street, behind the apartment complex. "It grew in one house, then jumped to another house and it just exploded, with black smoke and ashes in the air. And then it just went down the line."

The fire destroyed 23 of 32 buildings at the complex and 349 of 462 apartments. No one was injured and none of the units were occupied. The damage estimate was initially between $10 million and $15 million.

More than 100 firefighters from the county, city of Las Vegas and Henderson were able to prevent the blaze from spreading to Boulder Ranch, the residential neighborhood behind the apartment complex.

This morning Clark County fire officials were setting up their investigation.

Leinbach said a team from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was called in to help investigate and was expected to arrive today. A similar team was called in by the city of Las Vegas Fire Department after the Moulin Rouge fire, which was later determined to be arson.

"It brings us more eyes, more ears and more brains and can bring to bear more prosecution," Leinbach said.

As well, the county department's arson dog, a black lab named Wren, was expected to go through the site as soon as it cooled.

As the sun came up this morning, the extent of the damage could be seen. Singed piles of wallboard and other construction materials lay in piles. Construction crews, who had expected to be on the job this morning, were instead clustered around their trucks waiting to be interviewed by fire department officials. A heavy smell of smoke hung over the site.

Thursday night nearby residents, passer-bys and others watched a blaze that was among the biggest in recent memory.

Witnesses said the flames started small, but within minutes spread through the apartment complex.

Claudia Iwanicki was driving north on Boulder Highway when she saw the orange flames a hundred feet in the air and the billowing black smoke.

"I thought, 'Oh, my God, that's where I live,' " Iwanicki said.

Worse, she did not know whether her 13-year-old son, Devon, was at home or had been evacuated.

"I know he's all right," Iwanicki, in tears, repeated over and over as she wondered what to do after parking on Gibson Road along with 60 others who had been evacuated from their homes at nearby Boulder Ranch.

"Devon! Pick up the phone! There's a fire," Iwanicki cried into a cell phone as she desperately tried to find her son at home. Frantic, she raced to her two-story townhouse, separated from the fire by another row of homes and a block wall. Entering her home, she smelled smoke. No one was home.

Finding a neighbor's cell number, Iwanicki called and discovered Devon was with her, safe at a neighborhood bar on Boulder Highway. She and her son, like many others stayed with friends overnight.

The American Red Cross was paying for hotel rooms for two to five families who could not return to their homes by 2 a.m. today.

Residents of several homes on the other side of a wall that separates High Steed Street from the construction site saw the flames shoot up and ran down the street screaming for people to evacuate.

Travis Morgan, 12, said he and his brothers Garrett and Jacob were watching the movie "Just Married" when they saw a glare in the window. "We went outside and saw the fire and started running down the street yelling," he said. "Everybody was freaking out."

The Firenze apartments, owned by Ovation Development, have been under construction for months. Leasing had begun, and construction was to be completed by the end of this year.

The apartments that burned were townhome-style apartments, featuring private garages and many two-story units.

In a written statement, Jim Hernquist, president of Ovation Development, said he was deeply saddened by the fire. He thanked the fire crews and said the company would cooperate with the investigation.

He said it was premature to make any other comment now.

A company spokeswoman had no comment when asked whether the company was insured.

Luis Tristan, who works at the site for Ovation, said he heard about the fire last night and quickly headed to the scene. The last workers had left by about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Tristan said.

Michael LaBar, a sales associate at Marcus & Millichap, a real estate firm that tracks apartment construction, said the Firenze apartments were about 90 percent complete.

"It's just incredible," he said of the fire that devastated the complex.

Just south of the apartment complex is homebuilder D.R. Horton's Boulder Ranch, a complex of for-sale townhomes that contain three homes to a building are under construction. Officials at D.R. Horton could not be reached for comment Friday morning.

As the fire spread there were reports of explosions. Construction workers who returned to the site Thursday night said there were drums of fuel on the property. Natural gas lines burned into the night.

"I was right in that building doing stuff today and now it's on fire," said 18-year-old construction worker Roy Ingram.

Residents waiting anxiously in parking lots and in Central Christian Church, which is adjacent to the neighborhood and provided water and a place to gather and watch developments on television. Those outside shared stories, complaints and theories about what happened, and noticed by the smell of the smoke that the fire was starting to recede.

"Smell that! That's wood. That's good. You ever put a campfire out? That's the smell," Jay Like, another High Steed resident, said.

Leinbach said fires in construction projects are harder to fight.

"(Fire) starts easier, burns hotter and spreads faster," Leinbach said.

He said firefighters tried to make a perimeter of water around the fire to try to keep it from spreading.

Drivers in the area pulled over to watched the flames. Others walked up from nearby neighborhoods.

Traffic was detoured or blocked on U.S. 95 and intersections along Boulder Highway.

The intersection of Boulder Highway and Russell Road was closed to traffic.

The Russell Road exit off U.S. 95 was closed.

Witnesses reported seeing "fire tornadoes" -- patterns of swirling flames -- within the blaze.

"When there's a lot of heat and (extreme) temperature changes, the fire flows and moves," Leinbach said. "What we're seeing is a whirlwind pattern caused by the fire itself."

At the Taco Bell on Boulder Highway just south of Russell, a number of people had pulled off the road, parked their cars and stood on the roofs of their vehicles to view the fire.

Drivers were also pulling their cars off the road along Tropicana Avenue to view the fire, likely creating traffic hazards.

Ray Bourgeois, a local iron worker, said he first saw the fire around 8:15 or 8:30 while driving. He pulled off the road to watch what he described as one of the biggest blazes he had ever seen.

"I was here way before the fire department," he said.

Bourgeois said he initially parked right across from the Moturis Recreational Vehicle store on Boulder Highway, but moved his car quickly when he realized that there was a chance the fire could hit one of the store's propane tanks.

"If the wind would have been here, forget about it -- this would have all been blown up," he said, pointing to the lot that glowed orange from the flame's reflection.

Asked why he had pulled off the road and spent an hour watching the fire, Bourgeois said, "anybody would stop and watch that. Something like this doesn't happen every day."

Sun reporters

Sito Negron and Malia Spencer contributed to this story.

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