Firefighters displaced while repairs to station considered

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2002 | 10:44 a.m.

North Las Vegas firefighters will be living in a mobile home for up to a month while cracks in their station's walls and roof are studied and fixed, a city official said.

Station 53, on Martin Luther King Boulevard between Carey and Cheyenne avenues, has been deteriorating over the past decade or so, Robert Harary, assistant director for North Las Vegas Public Works Department, said. The problems began when the grounds outside were switched from grass to desert landscaping, causing the soil under the building to dry and shrink, he said.

"We've been patching cracks for years," Harary said.

An October report from Brizendine Engineering, a structural engineering firm, said that spaces between the walls and roof trusses could cause damage in a heavy wind or earthquake, prompting the decision to evacuate the building and come up with a plan to fix the building once and for all.

"We just wanted the firemen to be safe," he said.

Two members of the rescue unit temporarily are stationed a block away, sharing an apartment used by Southwest Ambulance. The four who man the engine have been placed in the three remaining North Las Vegas fire stations, said Jim Stubler, deputy fire chief for the North Las Vegas Fire Department. All six are expected to move into a mobile home behind Station 53 by the end of the week.

Response times in the interim will be extended by about 40 to 60 seconds in the outer reaches of the station's normal coverage -- a mostly uninhabited area around the North Las Vegas airport, Stubler said.

Brizendine Engineering, meanwhile, will finish the second phase of its study, including recommendations for repairing the building's damage.

"In three to four weeks we should be in repair mode," Harary said.

The public works official said studies to date have cost the city more than $5,000, with the last stage of Brizendine's work yet to be billed. The cost of repairing the building is still unknown.

The building cost about $229,000 to build in 1971 -- "when people didn't realize how bad the soils are in North Las Vegas," he said.