Monday, March 15, 2004 | 10:39 a.m.
The state fire marshal is leading the investigation into a Saturday night trailer fire that killed two young children in Pahrump and sent their mother to a Las Vegas hospital with smoke inhalation.
Detective Rick Huddleston of the Nye County Sheriff's Department said a doctor from the Clark County coroner's office was expected to arrive this afternoon to perform autopsies on the victims -- an 18-month-old boy and his 2 1/2-year-old sister.
The children's mother was airlifted to University Medical Center Saturday night. She remained in critical condition today, a hospital spokeswoman said.
"It was a very hot fire that started quick and rapidly went through the trailer," Huddleston said.
Huddleston would not release the names of the victims this morning.
The fire started between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. in the trailer that was parked in front of the home of relatives of the victims, about eight to 10 miles from the nearest Nye County fire station.
"It was remarkable how fast the fire department got here -- about eight minutes -- from when we called 911," said a woman who lives across the street from the family of the victims. She spoke on condition that her name would not be published in the newspaper.
"This is such a terrible tragedy -- we don't often get things like this, especially multiple fire deaths, in Pahrump."
The woman said her husband heard screams, opened the front door and saw smoke and flames coming from the trailer. He ran across the street and helped the grandfather of the children aim a garden hose on the fire.
"The fire was so hot that neither of them could get inside to save the children," the neighbor said. "The grandfather and grandmother singed the hairs on their arms and head and their eyebrows trying to get inside."
The neighbor said relatives of the victims told her the children were asleep in a top bunk of the trailer's sleeping area at the time of the fire.
"The mother was yelling, 'My babies! My babies are gone!' " the neighbor said. "I grabbed and hugged her 11-year-old daughter who was just standing there in shock. She had been sleeping in the house when the fire started."
A fourth child of the injured woman, a 13-year-old daughter, was in Alaska visiting friends, the neighbor said.
Huddleston and the neighbor said a space heater was being looked at as a potential cause of the blaze, but Huddleston said that has neither been confirmed as the origin of the fire, nor ruled out as of early today.
Chief Deputy Nevada State Fire Marshal Marty Lucas said this morning that no preliminary findings regarding the fire are being released.
The state fire marshal's office routinely investigates fires in counties with less than 100,000 population. That would include all but the state's three most populated counties: Clark, Washoe and Carson City.
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