Blaze erupts at Sky-Vue

Friday, July 30, 2004 | 11 a.m.

Jim Dunker, a homeless man hired through the Salvation Army's work program to guard a vacant lot east of the Sky-Vue Mobile Home Park, sat on his folding chair beneath a mesquite tree Thursday afternoon, sipping bottled water and watching six trailers in the city-condemned park burn to rubble.

For seven weeks, he said, he sat eight to 10 hours a day watching people hop security fences to wander through the park at 15 W. Owens Ave. that the city of Las Vegas and other entities had shut down on April 30 because of health and building violations. Dunker said he was surprised at Thursday afternoon's two-alarm blaze -- surprised it had not happened much sooner.

"Trespassing happens so frequently over there, I quit calling the police about it," Dunker said, noting that he is paid to reroute people attempting to cross through the vacant lot, not the mobile home park.

"There was a puff of smoke from one of the homes, then one after another they caught fire," said Dunker, a disabled military veteran who currently is a resident of the Salvation Army dormitory just west of Sky-Vue. "I have been homeless for four years, but I wouldn't live in one of those tinderboxes if they let me stay there for free."

The fire began at 1:07 p.m. and a second alarm followed quickly, resulting in 25 city units and 65 firefighters responding to the blaze, said Las Vegas Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski. It took firefighters 40 minutes to quell the flames amid strong, hot afternoon winds, he said.

Because of the extreme heat of the fire and the triple-digit temperatures of the scorching Las Vegas summer heat, Szymanski said fire investigators would not be able to begin sifting through the rubble until today at the earliest, as long as it cools down enough overnight.

"Right now the fire is under investigation," Szymanski said. "We will not be making any assumptions or speculation about the cause. At this point it could be anything. Right now it's undetermined."

Dunker said that given what he has seen in the area in June and July, it would not surprise him if "it was started by a drug addict falling asleep on his lit crack pipe."

Szymanski said the fire "was fought in what we call a defensive mode because no one was supposed to have been inside those condemned homes. No firefighters were allowed to go into the mobile homes to fight the fire. They had to fight it from the perimeter" to prevent risk of any injury.

The six burned condemned trailers were in such poor condition that no dollar damage is being blamed on the fire, Szymanski said.

Las Vegas recycling centers currently are paying about 30 cents a pound for painted scrap aluminum siding and 32 cents a pound for clean aluminum siding. Szymanski said that what was left after Thursday's fire was mostly melted aluminum, not worth even that much.

A woman who witnesses said was seen in the area and acting odd at the time the fire started was arrested by Metro Police officers near the scene on unrelated and unspecified charges. Szymanski said it was determined that she "had nothing to do with the fire." Her name was not released.

The area where Owens Avenue, Main Street and Las Vegas Boulevard meets is the most concentrated in the city for both the street homeless population and homeless people who reside in area shelters, including the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities and the Shade Tree shelter for women.

Thursday's fire was the latest chapter in the saga of a nearly 50-year-old mobile home park that has been an eyesore for more than two decades and a health hazard in more recent times.

The fire also comes on the heels of good news for the city of Las Vegas, which had allocated $140,000 to close the park, secure it and relocate more than 85 of its residents. The final taxpayer-footed bill for that project came to $85,579, with the unused allocated funds being returned to the general fund, City Neighborhood Services Director Orlando Sanchez said.

The fire was "a perfect example of why we shut down this mobile home park and protected the lives of the children, older people and others who were living there," Sanchez said, noting that the city's responsibility for securing the park ended in June after the last of the tenants were relocated to permanent homes and the security fence was in place.

Szymanski said those security measures were maintained by the property owners and that firefighters "had to break in" to fight the fire. Several feet of cyclone fence was cut down to get to the burning homes, all of which were on the east side of the complex. City workers were on scene Thursday afternoon securing the site so that others would not have easy access to the property, Szymanski aid.

Sanchez said the city sent the owners of the property, the DiMarco family, a letter dated June 18, giving them 30 days to submit what is called an action plan for vacant property. The DiMarcos responded by requesting additional time because they told the city they were in the process of trying to sell the property. A time extension was given, Sanchez said.

All but 10 units in the 100-space, four-acre park were rentals at the time the facility was closed. Four of the tenant-owned coaches were moved to other parks and the other six were abandoned, Sanchez said. It was not immediately known if any of the homes that burned Thursday were owned by former tenants.

Attempts to reach the DiMarcos for comment were not successful.

The DiMarcos face an Aug. 23 pretrial hearing in Las Vegas Municipal Court on charges of operating Sky-Vue without a business license. The City Attorney's office has said it will seek jail time for David DiMarco and his wife, Sandi.

City officials also are considering additional charges against the pair for alleged code violations. 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.