Fast-acting trooper helps teens escape burning house

By Riley Snyder, John Taylor (contact)

Published Thursday, June 20, 2013 | 2:40 p.m.

Updated Thursday, June 20, 2013 | 5:12 p.m.

A Nevada Highway Patrol trooper is being credited with alerting four teenagers and helping them escape a Thursday afternoon fire that destroyed a house in the northern valley.

Around 2 p.m., Trooper Robert Borchardt was near Craig Road and Decatur Boulevard when he saw a column of smoke coming from a nearby neighborhood, according to NHP spokesman Trooper Loy Hixson.

Borchardt, who has been with the patrol for nearly 15 years, drove toward the smoke and found a fire at 200 Tuffer Lane, near North Decatur Boulevard and West Alexander Road.

The blaze, Hixson said, had started on the ground and Borchardt at first tried to put it out with the fire extinguisher from his patrol car. When that didn’t stop the flames, Hixson said, Borchardt grabbed a garden hose but again couldn’t douse the fire.

By now, Hixson said, Borchardt noticed the fire had climbed the side of the house and was spreading.

That’s when Borchardt ran to the front of the house and began pounding on the door to alert anyone inside of the fire.

“There were four teens who were just inside talking, and they heard all this banging and yelling,” said Tim Szymanski, spokesman for Las Vegas Fire & Rescue. “It kinda scared them.”

But when the teens saw it was a lawman making all the noise, they opened the door and followed his advice to get out.

About 50 Las Vegas firefighters responded to the fire, which was brought under control about 30 minutes after the first unit’s arrival, Szymanski said. The teens were the only ones in the home at the time, and there were no injuries.

The house, however, was a total loss, said Szymanski, who estimated damage at $200,000.

The cause of the fire is under investigation. The American Red Cross and relatives are assisting the house’s five residents

Szymanski said it’s quite common for people inside a house on fire to be oblivious of the imminent danger.

He called it a “classic case” where the fire climbed the side of the house, got into the attic and spread from there. Often in such cases, he said, inhabitants have no idea anything is wrong until a passerby or neighbor sees smoke or fire and warns those inside to get out.