Still smoking: Apartment complex fire remains ‘deep-seated’

Two days after a southwest Las Vegas apartment complex under construction caught fire, flames and smoke continued to billow out of the burnt rubble Thursday.

Clark County firefighters are expected to continue fighting the blaze at 8030 W. Maule Ave. around the clock, according to a statement from Assistant Fire Chief Brian O’Neal.

“The fires are deep-seated in the piles of burning debris and occasionally flare-up,” O’Neal wrote.

On Thursday morning, white smoke that could be seen across the valley was met with pockets of black smoke as flames popped up in the crumbling apartment complex.

The $90 million project was 75 percent complete when it was destroyed Tuesday, O’Neal wrote. Officials initially estimated the damage at $200 million.

“Until the large piles of debris can be dispersed and extinguished, they will continue to smolder and produce smoke,” he wrote.

At around 4:45 p.m., O’Neal said the cause of the fire remained under investigation. He said an ignitable liquid detection dog was working in the suspected origin site.

“The team has a very good idea where the origin of the fire was due to the overwhelming volume of video captured throughout the incident,” O’Neal said in an email.

He said there was no estimate on how long operations on the site will continue.

One fire truck was designated to keeping an undamaged clubhouse protected, O’Neal wrote. Another three trucks were stationed at the scene, and in the late morning dozens of firefighters unrolled hose line, showering small pockets of bright orange for about 45 minutes.

O’Neal wrote that structural engineers had evaluated the stability of the concrete, and several agencies were working to investigate the cause of the fire, including Clark County, Las Vegas and Henderson firefighters, the state fire marshal and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Throughout the morning, dozens of drivers pulled over into “no parking” zones to take photos and videos of the structures as ash floated through the air and sections of the largest remaining building collapsed.

O’Neal said more heavy equipment was expected to arrive by the end of the day.

He compared this week’s conflagrations to two fires in 2003 that demolished complexes in the valley. In January of that year, fire at a construction site near Tropicana Avenue and Decatur Boulevard that would later become the Tahiti timeshares left 20 residents at a nearby condo complex displaced, according to Review-Journal archives.

The exposed wood of the first and second story made the building more flammable, county firefighters said at the time. The damage was estimated at $4.5 million, and the project was pushed back 45 days.

Nine months later, an arson fire damaged 23 of 31 buildings at the Firenze Apartments, near East Russell Road and Boulder Highway. Construction was pushed back about six months, but management opened the remaining 100 units, and the full complex remained open Thursday.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.