CORRECTION: Because of a reporting error, the address of an apartment complex was incorrect in a story in Sunday's Review-Journal. A fire burned the Desert Springs Apartments, 1500 E. Karen Ave.

Blaze leaves 30 homeless

      A grease fire in a woman's apartment spawned a massive blaze that swept through a Las Vegas complex Saturday night, leaving 30 people homeless.
      Clark County Fire Department Battalion Chief Chad Marshall said the two-alarm fire in Building 16 of the Desert Springs Apartments, 1500 E. Harmon Ave., broke out at 6:12 p.m. It took firefighters about 80 minutes to contain the blaze, which caused $300,000 in damage and destroyed all 12 apar tments in the building.
      "It was quite terrifying," said Sherri Wright, who lives in an adjacent building. Wright was walking her three children, Dale, 12, Serenia, 6, and Brandy, 10, home from a grocery store at the int ersection of Maryland Parkway and Harmon when she saw smoke billowing from the complex. "My heart was in my throat. I was thinking this might be my house."
      Witnesses told of dramatic efforts by neighbors to alert reside nts of Building 16 that the structure was burning.
      "The neighbors all did real good, banging on people's doors and letting them know about the fire," said Bret Humphries, who lives next to the burning building.
 0;     Sheena Smith, 11, witnessed the rescue attempts.
      "There was one man who didn't believe there was a fire," Smith said. "They were yelling at him, and finally he realized what was going on."       Marshall said the fire started in Apartment 103, where an elderly woman lives. Investigators determined that the woman, whose name was not reported, started the fire by failing to monitor potatoes she was cooking. The fir e was ruled accidental.
      "She was running, yelling for water," said Summer Johnson, 11, who saw the woman make frantic pleas for help after the fire started to spread. "They couldn't hear her because she had such a weak voice."
   ;    Of the 12 apartments, eight were destroyed by flames and four were ruined by smoke, heat and water. Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said the Las Vegas chapter of the American Red Cross was helping those displaced.
 
60;    "The apartment complex assistant manager told me that all the people could be accommodated either in vacant apartments in this complex or at another one nearby," Leinbach said.
      There was one injur y, and it was minor. Leinbach said a woman who lived in the destroyed building was treated for an asthma attack.
      "Her asthma was triggered but it wasn't directly because of the fire," Leinbach said. "It happened because she got excited."
      Marshall said the fire moved quickly through the attic and walls of the building.
      "I'm quite sure there were several people saved by smoke detectors tonight," he sa id.
      Marshall added it appears a medical condition from which the elderly woman suffers may have played a role in her inability to monitor the cooking of the potatoes.
      "It is our under standing that she has been ill and has been on medication," Marshall said.