Wednesday, March 17, 2004 | 11:20 a.m.
The trailer in which a 12-year-old girl died in a fire last week was occupied in violation of Las Vegas rules, and the owner of the property had illegally lived in the mobile home in 2000, according to city records.
The trailer was crammed into the back yard of a house in the 1600 block of Ogden Avenue, next to a shed in which neighbors said people also were living. If true, that would be a violation of city occupancy rules.
City records indicate a pattern of complaints dating from at least 1996 at the property, most stemming from trash and debris in the front and back yards. The most recent complaint, in 2003, was about tires, appliances and other debris in the front and side yards.
David Semenza, Neighborhood Response Manager for the city of Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department, said the prior complaints "heighten" the owner's responsibility for the fire.
When asked whether his department should have noticed people living on the property -- as neighbors have contended -- when it last responded to complaints of trash in the front yard in January 2003, Semenza said "it's not something we would follow up on. We enforce nuisances and zoning violations.
"We don't look back at all the previous complaints when we have a complaint on an address, and again, the complaint was trash and debris in yard. The officer who went there at that time had no knowledge of the previous history," Semenza said.
Part of the problem, Semenza said, is that the response team is "reactive, not proactive because of the staff level and number of complaints we get. ... Having only 10 officers for the entire valley, there's no way we can be proactive."
In the case of the visit to the Ogden address in January, "if for some reason we would have had opportunity to go into the back yard and discover the back was being occupied, that would have created a larger complaint that we would have followed up on."
The fire took place early Thursday. Firefighters responded within about four minutes of the 3:19 a.m. call, and fire department spokesman Tim Szymanski said the trailer already was "fully involved."
A half-hour later, firefighters were able to enter the remains of the trailer and found the girl's body.
The victim has not yet been identified, and Szymanski said the report on the cause of the fire is not complete. Neighbors and one former resident of the home said they suspected the fire was caused by electrical problems.
Semenza said that even though inspectors went to the property again in 2003, "it was an issue of outside storage, and the front yard needed to be cleaned up, and that was the only issue we needed to address."
However, he said, the owner twice had been told not to live in the trailer.
"He was just storing it back there as far as we were concerned and that was no violation," Semenza said. "He said when he came into town he used it as his office."
The owner, Semenza said, "had been warned by us."
As of Monday, the back yard of the house mostly was filled by the charred remains of the trailer where the 12-year-old girl died, surrounded by blackened junk.
The entire property is surrounded by yellow tape, and signs in front of the house explain that the home is unfit for habitation. The former occupants of the home now live in a blue Pontiac Grand Am parked in the driveway, a neighbor said.
Las Vegas officials are trying to figure out how to deal with the situation. The first step is to order to owner -- the Abeyta Family Trust, registered in Covina, Calif. -- to clean and secure the property. Calls to Victor and Maria Abeyta, the owners of record according to city documents, were not returned Tuesday.
"It's a terrible, burned-up mess," Semenza said.
He said he wrote up a demolition order for the property on Monday. The order won't take effect until it is signed by the building and safety department director, Paul Wilkins.
Until the owners respond to the order, Semenza said, there's little the city can do. He said in rare circumstances, the city can clean up a property and bill the owner.
"There is something in the nuisance ordinance called abatement without notice, and that requires the city manager and at least two departments ... to declare it such a nuisance it has to be immediately cleaned without giving notice," Semenza said. "In this case it seems like we have time to give notice."
Semenza said such orders typically address places "like crack houses or something like that, where it's a vacant building and it needs to be immediately abated. We do that very, very infrequently. We have to be very careful about people's rights."
Jessica Pickens, 26, who rents a home across the street, said she hopes the building is dealt with quickly, whether it's demolished or renovated.
"I worry about people sleeping there and stuff, especially because the owners are out of town," Pickens said.
Matthew Jones, 15, who lives next door to the house, on Monday was sweeping up glass shattered by the heat of the fire, which bubbled the green paint on the 1986 Ford Bronco in his driveway. He said he was "not really bothered" by the prospect of the neighboring house remaining vacant.
A neighbor, who owns multiple properties in the neighborhood, said he's complained about the condition of the house before. The man, who said he did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation, said he and the owner of once "had an argument over the fence. He doesn't care. He lives in California."
He said the owner cleaned up the property when ordered, but also left much of the junk in the back yard, and set up a fence to block people's view of it. City codes do not allow inspectors to order a cleanup if they cannot see the debris from the street.
"I knew it was a fire trap, and I said one day there was going to be a fire," the neighbor said.
He said there are several properties in the neighborhood that also are illegally subdivided, and have trailers in the back.
"It's the same type of situation that will end up like this," said the man.
Semenza said that single family homes cannot be divided into smaller rental units.
"That's not to say an owner in their own home can't rent out a couple of rooms," Semenza said. "But number one, he has to be residing there. He can't just buy a house, and section it off and rent the spaces out."
Semenza said he had not received large numbers of complaints about illegal subdividing in the neighborhood.
He said he visited the neighborhood after the fire, and "my drive through there indicates we need to take a better look at that neighborhood."
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