Firefighters keep vigil for captain

Keith Paul

Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2000 | 10:33 a.m.

A severely injured Las Vegas Fire Department captain was able to move each of his limbs slightly Tuesday, progress that lifted the spirits of firefighters providing an around-the-clock vigil for him in a hospital parking lot.

"We're all just family," said Eugene Marshall, a firefighter on Capt. Nathan Pechacek's crew. "Firefighters have been coming and checking to see how he's doing."

Firefighters set up their mobile command post in the parking lot of University Medical Center, giving them a place to check in for news of Pechacek's condition, provide support for his family and swap stories about the 40-year-old veteran firefighter.

Pechacek was still in critical condition this morning.

"He never has a single bad word to say about anybody," firefighter Roger Carsten said. "He always has a smile on his face."

Pechacek had been on vacation Sunday, but he still went to the station at Durango Drive and Charleston Boulevard to eat breakfast with his crew. About 8:50 p.m. the crew was called to an accident a couple of blocks away.

A Ford Explorer had been knocked onto its side and the driver critically injured. The firefighters and medics pulled the injured driver from the wreck and rushed him to UMC.

"We didn't know it was him. We didn't recognize him because of the injuries," Marshall said. "We recognized the car and the license plate after we got him out. I called his wife and asked who was driving her car and she said Nate was.

"I just told her to get to the hospital because he had just been in a bad accident," Marshall said.

Pechacek's family arrived, and so did scores of firefighters. They stayed through the night, and there has been someone there since.

Pechacek had stopped at the stop sign at northbound Cimarron Road at Alta Drive and was continuing through the intersection when his sport utility vehicle was struck by a 1998 Ford Expedition driven by Dorin Geba, 33, of Las Vegas, Metro Police said.

Geba, who suffered minor injures in the crash, is charged with running the stop sign. Geba failed a field sobriety test, police said, and was booked into the Clark County jail for felony driving under the influence.

A judge set $500,000 bail for Geba this morning in a courtroom packed with firefighters. Prosecutors said his blood alcohol level was 0.22, compared with 0.10 required to establish drunken driving.

Pechacek's longtime friend, Lary Feezor, who came in from California, knows more than most what the injured firefighter is going through. He is now confined to a wheelchair because a drunken driver hit him 10 years ago.

"This is just unbelievable. I mean this guy saves lives all the time," Feezor said. "I'm not saying this because of my accident, but it seems that this only happens to good people."

Feezor said family has always come first for Pechacek, who coached both his son's and daughter's soccer teams.

Pechacek's 8-year-old son, wife and other relatives were with the firefighters Tuesday afternoon in the parking lot. Pechacek's family was too upset to talk.

But the firefighters were there comforting them. Firefighter Tony DiBona helped Pechacek's son with his homework in the parking lot.

"It's really a family relationship we have with one another," Las Vegas Fire Chief Mario Trevino said. "When one of the firefighters is injured, it's like one of their family was injured."

Trevino said it was probably best that rescuers initially didn't know Pechacek was the victim they were trying to save.

"If you start to analyze the decisions, it makes it that much more difficult," he said.

Marshall said firefighters and rescue workers approach each accident the same way.

"We always treat an accident like it was our mother or father or sister or brother involved," he said. "This time it really was."

Reporter Kim Smith contributed to this story.