Monday, Sept. 8, 2003 | 11:03 a.m.
Clark County and federal fire investigators would like to talk to anyone with information about Thursday's fire at the Firenze apartment construction sit. Call (702) 249-7372.
About 19 federal agents from Midwestern and Eastern states joined Clark County fire investigators Sunday using scientific tools and a fume-sniffing dog in the arduous work of finding the cause of Thursday's massive fire that destroyed 352 luxury apartments.
The first step included interviews with hundreds of nearby residents, business owners and workers from the construction site of Thursday night's blaze at the Firenze Luxury Apartments at Russell Road and Boulder Highway, said Philip Horbert, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives National Response Team.
"We are not here because there is anything suspicious," Horbert said, because everything from an accidental lightning strike to arson is a possible cause.
It is the size of the fire that brought the federal team to Las Vegas. The blaze destroyed most of the Firenze apartment complex and the damage was estimated at more than $10 million.
"We've been to larger ones and smaller ones, and this one is in the middle range," Horbert said. "This is impressive."
The four-alarm blaze Thursday night is the largest fire at a construction site that the county has had, said Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach, who has been with the department since 1983.
The fire damage was as much as $15 million, and that's more than 40 other construction site fires since 1999 combined, which amounted to about $8.6 million in damage, Leinbach said.
The only fire that caused damage even comparable to the Firenze fire was a $6.5 million blaze in January 2003, called the Tahiti fire, near Tropicana Avenue and Decatur Boulevard, he said.
Every potential cause of the last week's fire will be ruled out until the investigation team agrees on a specific event, Horbert said. A full report and results of all tests will be given to Clark County at the end of the investigation.
Clark County's fume-sniffing dog, Wren, began checking early this morning for traces of flammable materials in the ashes of the apartments.
"There's no one in the field who could technically match her," Leinbach said of the black Labrador retriever. "Her nose is so sensitive, she can sniff in parts per billion."
That means the dog can detect odors below levels that machines pick up, Leinbach said. Wren helped investigators pin down the cause of the arson fire at Moulin Rouge in August.
The dog began working the fire at 6:45 a.m. this morning and hadn't found anything by 10:30 a.m., but she had a lot of ground to cover at the fire site and authorities were confident that the dog would help them pinpoint where and how the fire started.
"She's very accurate and dependable," and has helped authorities convict arsonists in past cases, Leinbach said.
Former county fire dog Josie, a golden Labrador, once sniffed a suspicious substance on a man in a crowd at a fire, and the man was subsequently arrested and charged with arson, Leinbach said.
Horbert said they are at the beginning of the investigation and are collecting copies of all surveillance videos and amateur footage that may have captured the fire. The federal and Clark County investigators, about 19 in all, began interviewing people Sunday.
"We'll try to determine from interviews where the fire was first spotted," Horbert said. Metro Police Search and Rescue flew over the site Sunday afternoon, photographing the ruins before anything is moved.
Horbart praised Clark County, Las Vegas and Henderson firefighters' efforts to keep the blaze away from nearby apartments and condominiums. "Their heroic actions prevented the fire from spreading to the other homes," he said.
As investigators pursue the fire's cause in a probe expected to take up to a week, a chemist will take samples and fly them to a Walnut Creek, Calif., ATF laboratory for analysis, Horbert said.
"A lot of this boils down to sweat and shovels, digging through the ashes as long as it takes," Horbert said. The current federal team is not the same one as investigators who probed the Moulin Rouge fire in August, he said. The western team is in Spokane, Wash., so they called investigators from as far away as Providence, R.I., and Washington, D.C.
"Anything and everything is a possibility right now," Leinbach said of possible causes of the fire. "Nothing has been ruled out."
Clark County Fire Chief Earl Greene said investigators will be trying to eliminate potential causes.
"I think they have a pretty good idea where it started," he said. "Basically because of the size of this we want to search every nook and cranny."
Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid, whose district includes the property where the blaze erupted, toured the site Friday morning.
"I think we need to support the fire department," he said. "I want to make sure the people I represent get what they need."
He said the fire caused a great deal of loss to the community. He added he hopes the developer builds again.
"This is an area that needs redevelopment," he said. "These were units people could afford."
He also said if the fire is found to be intentional there needs to be full prosecution.
Though the apartment complex was unoccupied at the time of the fire many people in neighboring Boulder Ranch were displaced and two homes were damaged by heat and smoke.
The Boulder Ranch neighborhood of triplexes is separated from the charred remains of Firenze by a six-foot-high cement block wall. Residents on Extreme Shear Avenue were among those evacuated Thursday night.
Many were returning home Friday morning to assess the damage and wait for insurance representatives to arrive.
David Thornton, whose home's roof caught fire said he couldn't see his house until 6 a.m. Friday.
When he arrived the door had been broken down by the fire department.
"That's probably the least of my worries," Thornton said.
He said he wasn't going to be able to go home for a while.
"As far as I know they (the county) have deemed it unliveable," he said.
He said firefighters broke down the front door to get to the garage. They opened his garage and brought hoses through to put out the fire in his ceiling.
He didn't know what to expect when he finally arrived.
"I didn't know anything," he said. "I was more relieved when they told me they got the dog out."
Thornton picked up his dog, Alice, at Dewey Animal Care.
His stepmother, Susan Thornton, said the family hasn't heard from David since the fire. "We've been trying to reach David over the weekend," she said. "We figure he is staying with friends."
Another woman credits a construction trailer for saving her mother's home on Extreme Shear Avenue.
Christi Daugherty said the trailer absorbed a lot of heat that would have hit her mother's home. She said neighboring homes that weren't blocked by the trailer suffered more damage.
"It's like a little angel sitting here," Daugherty said.
Daugherty's aunt, Patty Tanz, who also lives in the home said the windows were glowing orange before they fled the house Thursday night.
"The flames were really really close," she said. "We grabbed the cat and our purses and left."
She said the police came down the street with their loud speakers and told residents to evacuate.
Many sought refuge in the nearby Central Christian Church parking lot where they watched the fire.
"From the church you could see the blazes," Marla Small, whose boyfriend owns a unit on Extreme Shear, said.
Small was visiting Las Vegas from Chicago with her five sisters. She and her boyfriend both live in the Windy City and use his house in Boulder Ranch a few times a year.
"Oh boy, this will be a memorable trip for us. That's for sure," she said.
One man, who only identified himself as Chris, said he and his family stayed at the church for a few hours before heading to a relative's house.
"We've just come back," he said. "We are happy our house is in one piece."
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