Lower Kyle Canyon residents at mercy of fires

Adrienne Packer

Friday, May 31, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.

By the time Clark County fire tankers lumbered up Lower Kyle Canyon Road on Thursday , flames had devoured Leslie Hanson's one-story home.

It has become a familiar story in the rural community below Mount Charleston: The fate of homes rests with firefighters at the closest fire station -- about 15 miles away -- and more times than not they're too late.

The residents' plight won't likely improve soon.

The Lower Kyle Canyon advisory board's repeated budget requests for a 5,000-gallon water storage tank and road improvements have yet to be granted.

"It takes the fire department a long time to get here because the road is just ghastly," said Hanson's mother, Marsha Hawley, who also serves as secretary of the advisory board.

Clark County Commissioner Chip Maxfield has been working on solutions with the city of Las Vegas, but predicts a fire station in the area is years away.

Until sprawling development creeps up to rural communities, residents can't expect services they would receive in the city.

"It's something we all live with when we live in a rural area," Maxfield said.

"If our house catches fire, we pretty much know it's going to burn to the ground. As development occurs, naturally services will move out there."

Stan "Duffy" Grismanauskas, rural coordinator for the county fire department, said of the last six homes that caught fire in the Lower Kyle Canyon during the past six years, only two were salvageable.

The community has a volunteer fire department, but most firefighters work in the city. Most times it takes them as long as a full-time crew to reach rural desert communities.

Hawley said the water that tankers haul to rural homes is all they have.

"When they run out of water they say, 'Are we going to save the house or keep the fire from spreading everywhere else,' " Hawley said. "This is hot desert up here. That's the choice they have to make."

Maxfield doubts a storage tank would make much difference. In his research, he said he learned it takes 1,500 gallons a minute to fight a large blaze. And it takes at least an hour to fully extinguish the fire.

Grismanauskas said unless the storage tank was on the same property as the burning structure, it wouldn't be an asset.

"It would have helped; would it have stopped the fire? No," said Grismanauskas, adding that residents' best option is to install a cistern pump on their property and use it to keep fires in check until crews arrive.

The county has a mutual-aid agreement with the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, Grismanauskas said.

Still, while firefighters' goal is to reach a scene within five minutes of the call in the city, crews typically take between 10 minutes and 20 minutes to arrive in rural communities.

Residents point further up the mountain to the community of Mount Charleston, whose homeowners are better protected because they have their own fire station. But Mount Charleston homeowners also pay the highest fire tax rate in the county.

Hawley conceded that one of the factors that led to her daughter's home burning down is that some rural residents are opposed to tax rate increases.

"It's a funny place," Hawley said. "People don't want to go to the government to ask for things; I'm sure they don't want to raise taxes."