Homeless man’s cat blamed for fire in storage units

Jen Lawson

Thursday, May 1, 2003 | 9:39 a.m.

A homeless man's cat knocked over a candle inside a storage unit on Valley View Boulevard Wednesday morning, starting a blaze that damaged 20 units, fire officials said.

Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said it appeared the man had been living in a unit at A Low Cost Storage, 4850 S. Valley View Blvd., near Tropicana Avenue. The man was not in the storage unit at the time.

A woman who answered the phone at A Low Cost Storage on Wednesday declined to comment.

The fire started shortly before 10 a.m. Firefighters extinguished the fire within 15 minutes, Leinbach said. It caused $35,000 in structural damage. The dollar amount of property damage hadn't been determined.

The man who had been living in the storage unit apparently left a candle lit for his cat, which died in the fire, Leinbach said.

Sgt. Eric Fricker, who heads up Metro's Homeless Evaluation Liaison Program, said in the 10 years he's worked with the homeless, he's never encountered anyone living in a storage unit.

"Traditionally, it would be really hard to do that. There is on-site management and people going in and out all the time," Fricker said. "Most of the homeless folks we know don't want to draw attention to themselves."

David Bell, manager of Storage West at 2700 E. Flamingo Road, pointed out that there are city and county ordinances that prohibit people from using storage units as residences.

"No one can live in the unit, you can't operate a business out of it, you can't sleep in it, you can't run a TV in it," Bell said. "You just store your things and leave."

These days most storage facilities have video surveillance and managers who live on site, Bell said, which would make it hard for a person to live in a unit.

Years ago a few people tried to rent units to live in, but he didn't allow it, Bell said.

"If someone were to come up here with a shopping cart, I would say, 'I'm sorry, I can't accommodate you,' " he said.