Propane blast

Jace Radke

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000 | 11:27 a.m.

The manager of a Las Vegas apartment complex sparked a massive explosion Sunday night when he tried to repair a propane tank valve while smoking a cigar.

The blast rocked the neighborhood around Stewart Avenue and 11th at about 4:30 p.m., shattering windows at a neighboring apartment complex and destroying two units at the Vegas Court Apartments at 231 N. 11th St.

The explosion forced 45 people from the two complexes to find temporary housing, officials said.

Leonard Hale, the 63-year-old apartment manager, was listed in critical condition in University Medical Center this morning. He suffered second- and third-degree burns to his arms, face and chest. No one else was injured in the blast.

Las Vegas Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski said Hale was lucky to have survived the explosion.

"From what we can tell we had a person messing around with liquid petroleum gas," Szymanski said. "This explosion is kind of like what happens when you turn the gas on in your barbecue. You drop the match in and whoosh. That's what happened here."

O.D. Hill, who lives across 11th in the Stewart Arms Apartments, and another neighbor ran into the wreckage to pull Hale to safety.

"Leonard was knocked woozy by the blast," Hill said. "He's always smoking a stubby little stogy, and I guess he was doing it while he was trying to fix that valve.

"When we grabbed him he was still talking about fixing the valve."

Hale was still in his demolished apartment when the two neighbors came to his aid.

"He was all charred black standing in the middle of the wreckage," the second neighbor who helped Hill said. "He had skin hanging off his arms. He really didn't know what had happened."

The blast caused $75,000 in damage to the Vegas Court Apartments, and a city building inspector determined that the building was unsafe and electricity would remain shut off. That decision left the 30 residents of the complex seeking help from the American Red Cross in locating temporary housing.

Across the street, 15 residents at the Stewart Arms were also helped to find shelter by the Red Cross because of blast damage including several shattered windows.

Clumps of stucco, roof tiles and wooden ceiling beams littered the intersection of Stewart and 11th as Las Vegas firefighters worked to put out small spot fires in Hale's demolished apartment.

In the wreckage a suitcase balanced precariously on a shelf suspended by two walls that once made up half of a closet, and a billiards trophy could be seen poking out from under some stucco near a powder blue vacuum cleaner.

The propane tank is believed to have held about 20 gallons of fuel. The one-story stucco complex was built in the 1930s and was never hooked up to natural gas, so residents rely on propane tanks for water heaters, Szymanski said.

The fire department's hazardous materials team checked the building for dangerous chemicals and the possibility that the explosion could have been caused by a methamphetamine lab before allowing investigators inside.

"All we know at a scene like this is that there was an explosion," Szymanski said. "We don't know if it's fireworks, chemicals or what, so we let Haz-Mat go in first."

Two kittens believed to have been in the apartment at the time of the blast have not been found by firefighters.