Moulin Rouge residents may be allowed back

Monday, June 2, 2003 | 11:01 a.m.

Donations Those wishing to donate to the Red Cross to help feed the Moulin Rouge residents can call the Red Cross Southern Nevada Chapter office at 791-3311 or bring donations to the office at 3672 N. Rancho Drive near Gowan Road. The Red Cross will accept donations by credit card, cash or checks.

For 60 residents displaced after fire destroyed the Moulin Rouge last week, the news that they might be allowed back in their apartments by Wednesday was greeted with smiles at Sunday supper.

A special task force from the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms spent the weekend combing through the burned shell of the 48-year-old historic landmark, Las Vegas Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski said Sunday.

"They started doing interviews late Friday and have continued throughout the weekend," Szymanski said. "There's nothing yet pointing to an origin or a cause."

Fast-moving flames early Thursday morning caused more than $1 million in damage, bringing a request from the Las Vegas Fire Department for 18 federal agents to join nine local investigators to seek the cause of the three-alarm fire at the Moulin Rouge, the state's first racially integrated casino during its short heyday in 1955.

The homeless residents could not say enough about the kindness of a downtown Las Vegas motel owner, the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

Cabinet-maker Ray Villalobos had just secured a job when he was evacuated from his apartment.

"We're one of the misplaced, the displaced," Villalobos said as he accepted a paper plate piled with a hamburger, fries and a bag of potato chips.

"I'm grateful," Villalobos said. "The Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the motel have just been wonderful."

For Diane Davidson, who had lived at the Moulin Rouge for a year, temporary motel life was difficult with her husband suffering from diabetes.

Keeping his medication cool costs about $6 to $10 a day for ice, she said.

"It's getting expensive," she said.

Her best friend, Patricia Freeland, said rescuers have "bent over backwards" to ensure people are comfortable.

"I was right next to it when the fire happened," Freeland said. "We're all lucky to be alive. If it hadn't been for the Red Cross, we would have been out on the streets."

Gail Desargant, another Moulin Rouge resident, said she was worried that her fiancee, Robert Wells, would be unable to find her.

She has not been able to contact Wells and said she expects to hear from him on Tuesday.

"Please say that I am staying in a motel at Ogden Avenue and Sixth Street," she said. "He's been looking at the fire on TV and doesn't know where I am."

Motel owner Carson Frazini, who manages three buildings known as the Crest Budget Inn and the Beverly Palms Motel, about a block away, decided to donate the rooms after hearing the Moulin Rouge residents slept on cots at the Dula Center at Bonanza Road and Las Vegas Boulevard, Red Cross of Southern Nevada spokeswoman Sharon Tutrone said.

Joe Quinn, a volunteer from Chicago who helped distribute more than 200 meals a day to the fire victims, said he was glad to do something for them.

"I've been here morning, noon and night," Quinn said Sunday as he handed plates of food, bottled water and orange punch to men and women waiting in the late afternoon heat.

Red Cross Southern Nevada Chapter Executive Director Penney Towers said the cooperation between the Red Cross and the Salvation Army made rescue efforts easier.

"We all have been working, the whole staff has," Towers said. "Without the Salvation Army we would not have been as successful as we have."

Towers marveled at the strength of the dispossessed people.

"It's a hardship for them being displaced," Towers said. "They have weathered this."