Fire hits mobile home park

Ed Koch and Jen Lawson

Thursday, Aug. 19, 2004 | 9:54 a.m.

The second fire in the past three weeks at the condemned Sky-Vue Mobile Home Park came on the heels of the city of Las Vegas sending a notice to the park's owners ordering them to demolish the trailers, authorities said.

Wednesday's fire was reported at 9:20 a.m. and was contained within minutes by city of Las Vegas Fire and Rescue firefighters, Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski said.

The city on Monday had given the owners of the mobile home park "a 10-day notice and order to abate dangerous buildings by demolition," Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Director Orlando Sanchez said.

That means that on Aug. 26, the city, if it does not get a response from the owners, will begin action to clear the site by sending out notices for bids from contractors to do the job.

The city then would pay for the demolition and place a lien on the property at 15 W. Owens Ave. so that when the land is sold taxpayer costs for the demolition plus a 15 percent administration fee would be recovered.

"It would take about 40 days after the deadline and it (Sky-Vue) would be gone," Sanchez said of the park that the city and other government entities shut down on April 30 because of health and building violations.

"The reason it takes that long is that we are required to send notice to the owner about what it will cost to do the demolition and give the owner one last chance to abate the property with his own contractor before doing it with the one we hire," Sanchez said.

The demolition notice comes on the heels of the failure by the DiMarco family, owners of the property, to submit a plan outlining how they would keep the property secured and maintained.

The city sent the DiMarcos a letter, dated June 18, giving them 30 days to submit the plan. The DiMarcos responded by requesting additional time because they told the city they were in the process of trying to sell the property. That extension lapsed, resulting in the city sending out the demolition notice.

Sky-Vue owners David DiMarco and his wife, Sandi, face jail time for allegedly operating the mobile home without a license and may face additional charges for the code violations. A pretrial hearing is set for Aug. 23.

Those violations, as determined by several agencies, involved alleged failures to comply with health and safety codes for sewers, electricity and water. The park was also without a fire hydrant that the city had ordered the owners to install.

Since the closure, the property has been plagued by two fires, one destroying two vacant trailers Wednesday and heavily damaging a third. The other fire destroyed six vacant trailers July 29. There were no injuries or deaths in either blaze.

On Wednesday, smoke from the same two trailers resulted in firefighters being recalled to the scene shortly after 3 p.m. that day after a passer-by saw "a whisper of smoke," Szymanski said.

Investigators ruled Wednesday's fire was incendiary, which means that people started the fire.

"They don't know if it was intentionally set or some homeless people could have been eating or smoking there," Szymanski said.

Someone had ripped the aluminum siding off the trailers before the fires, exposing wood frames and paneling that added to other fire hazards. Fire investigators had previously given up on determining a cause for the July 29 two-alarm blaze because the destruction was so great, Szymanski said.

The July 29 blaze featured strong winds, downed power lines and materials left behind in trailers that could have fueled a fire, Szymanski said.

"If it's windy, all you need is a small fire and away it goes," he said.

"There's always the possibility of arson and also the possibility that homeless (people) were in the area," Szymanski said of the site near where Las Vegas Boulevard meets Main Street, an area where the majority of the region's homeless shelters are located.

Szymanski said it would be difficult to determine if an accelerant started the fire, because "the trailers are being trashed. It is possible someone had a gasoline can out there" or paints, solvents or other flammable materials amid the debris.

He said because of that, the presence of a gasoline can does not necessarily mean that someone deliberately poured contents from such a can on the homes to set the fire.

No dollar loss was immediately placed on Wednesday's fire. The trailers that were destroyed July 29 had already been in such poor condition that no dollar damage was placed on the fire, Szymanski said.

"We know no one is going to replace those trailers," Szymanski said, explaining why no dollar amounts have been determined for the debris.

When a framed house burns, fire investigators place an estimated amount of damages because many times the owner decides to repair and rebuild the home.

"You would probably spend more money to remove what's left of them," Szymanski said of the burned trailers at Sky-Vue.

The nearly 50-year-old mobile home park has been an eyesore for more than two decades and a health hazard in more recent times.

From April to June, the city spent about $85,600 in taxpayer money to close and secure the 100-space, four-acre park and relocate more than 85 of its residents.

The city's security responsibility ended in June after the last of the tenants were relocated and the cyclone security fence was put in place, Sanchez said.

City Councilman Lawrence Weekly agreed, saying the latest Sky-Vue fire was unfortunate, but that "ultimately, it's the property owners' responsibility. We've (the city) done our part."

Weekly said that the Fire Department response was "part of public safety. What's happening inside the park is the owners' responsibility."

When asked whether the public safety ultimately would be better served by a stronger security presence at Sky-Vue, or whether the city might find it less expensive in the long run to provide security itself, Weekly said, "I don't want to make any of those predictions."

Sun reporters Sito Negron and Mary Manning contributed to this story.