News briefs

Thursday, Dec. 16, 1999 | 11:54 a.m.

Man discovered in lake near Dam

Arizona police are investigating the death of a man whose body was found in Lake Mead near Hoover Dam Tuesday afternoon.

Underwater maintenance crews found and retrieved the body from about 300 feet of water at the base of an intake tower, detectives with the Mohave County, Ariz., sheriff's office said.

The victim, a fully clothed white male adult wearing a backpack, was taken to the Mohave County medical examiner's office in Kingman, Ariz. An autopsy is pending.

Pit contaminated with radioactivity

The U.S. Department of Energy is considering drilling a monitoring well near a pit contaminated with radioactive tritium at its North Las Vegas complex.

Scientists from the DOE and its site manager, Bechtel Nevada, confirmed that water seeping into an underground storage vault in its A-1 Building on Losee Road was not coming from sewage, DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said Wednesday.

Tritium levels have dropped from 227,000 picocuries per liter -- 10 times the safe drinking water limit -- to 34,000 picocuries per liter, she said. The contaminated water in the pit was discovered in October.

A laboratory analysis did not find volatile or semi-volatile compounds and low levels of total dissolved solids, further confirming the water source was fresh, she said.

No other pit in the complex is contaminated and air monitors have been installed to sample the building's air for radiation. None has been detected, Harkess said.

Woman burned in morning blaze

A 50-year-old woman was burned early this morning as she escaped from her smoke-filled and burning house in the 4800 block of Vermont Avenue.

The woman, who had second- and third-degree burns on her hands, told Las Vegas firefighters she awakened to the sound of an alarm from the smoke detector about 3:20 a.m. The fire was blowing near the house next door, but firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze before it spread.

The woman said she crawled to the sliding glass doors in her house and burned her hands on the doors as she tried to escape the house, Las Vegas Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski said.

Although she was able to get out, her two dogs died in the fire, he said.

Careless smoking is believed to have started the fire that led to about $70,000 worth of damage to the house the woman's belongings, Szymanski said.

Work on I-15 in Arizona ending

Bridge repair work on Interstate 15 along the Arizona strip between Nevada and Utah are expected to be completed Friday.

The bridges located in the Virgin River Gorge between Mesquite and St. George, Utah, have been under repair since Oct. 25.

The decks of the two bridges were badly deteriorated because of salt from snow removal operations in Utah, Arizona Department of Transportation engineer Kent Link said.

Oversized vehicles traveling between Utah and California have had to use 400-mile detours to get around the construction.