15 homeless as fire hits three houses

Friday, April 15, 2005 | 9:54 a.m.

A two-alarm fire that damaged three Las Vegas houses left 15 people, including seven children, out of their homes and in the hands of the American Red Cross for assistance Thursday.

Nearly 50 firefighters from Las Vegas and North Las Vegas battled 30 mph winds, which helped to spread the blaze that started at 8:12 a.m., Las Vegas Fire & Rescue spokesman Tim Szymanski said.

There were no reported injuries, Szymanski said.

Neighbors and a student who had been driving through the area saw flames and smoke spread to the houses by wind gusts from the front yard of a home in the 1000 block of West Carey Avenue near Martin Luther King Boulevard, Szymanski said.

The student and neighbors alerted the people inside the homes as the wind pushed flames up the front of the house and into an attic vent, Szymanski said. The vent acted like a wind tunnel, where wind spread the fire throughout the first house and into the other two homes, he said.

The fire destroyed one house, a car and a pickup truck and damaged two other homes for a preliminary damage estimate of $100,000, Szymanski said. That estimate could grow, he said.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

It took firefighters a half-hour to douse the intense fire, which also melted a natural gas meter, allowing natural gas to feed the fire until the meter was shut off, Szymanski said.