Family flees house fire
While most families still were enjoying post-Christmas cheer, the Burgos family was fleeing for safety.
The multigenerational family of 13 escaped its burning house in northwest Las Vegas on Wednesday morning, but the flames destroyed nearly everything the family owned.
“I hate to see it happen to anybody, but they were really nice people,” said Ronald Marquis, who lives across the street.
The fire started about 7:35 a.m. at 8513 Sable Beauty St., near Grand Teton Drive and Jones Boulevard.
Marquis’ 18-year-old son, Robert, was getting ready for work when his mother alerted him to the smoke.
The younger Marquis, an explorer with the Clark County Fire Department, said he ran outside with a few other neighbors to help. The family already was safe outside, but some of them escaped the second-floor inferno thanks only to a ladder left up to hang Christmas lights, he said.
Mary Kay Arellano and her husband, Guillermo, were awakened by fire engines. They looked outside and saw massive amounts of smoke.
“We couldn’t believe it,” Mary Kay Arellano said.
Neighbors along the street gathered on the sidewalks with the Burgos family and watched the fire burst through the roof.
Mary Kay Arellano grabbed her video camera and recorded the firefighters’ efforts to contain the stubborn blaze. The video captured a billowing plume of smoke streaming from the burned-out roof and flames leaping skyward as firefighters dumped water from above.
By the time firefighters beat the blaze, the fire had destroyed the roof and second-floor while causing an estimated $350,000 in damage to house the family called home since 2004. The value of the 3,754-square-foot home in April was $482,000, according to county records.
Investigators had not determined what sparked the fire.
Four people were taken to the hospital for minor burns and smoke inhalation.
“The one fellow’s hand was just blackened,” Mary Kay Arellano said. “It looked like something out of a scary movie.”
The family of nine adults and four children included grandparents, their children and grandchildren, neighbors said.
Neighbors were organizing collections of clothing and other necessities to help the family. A neighbor provided the Burgos relatives with temporary shelter, but they eventually moved in with a cousin who lives nearby, said a Burgos relative who identified herself only as Claire.
“It’s like a bad dream,” she said. “Thank God everybody’s OK.”