Fire hydrant fixed after blaze destroys houses

Eric Leake

Friday, Jan. 28, 2005 | 9:38 a.m.

The broken hydrant fire investigators said allowed flames to gut three houses under construction in North Las Vegas early this week was working again Thursday after someone dug to the underground valve for the hydrant, a Clark County Fire Department spokesman said Thursday.

Firefighters on Monday night had to drag an additional 700 feet of hose to another nearby hydrant while using water from trucks to battle the blaze in the Alexander Park neighborhood, along Alexander Road at Puebla Street. The extent of damage to the two-story homes would have been lessened if crews had had immediate access to a working hydrant, Bob Leinbach, a fire department spokesman, said.

One of the homes was a complete loss and the other two were partial losses, investigators said. Early estimates put the total damage to the wood frames at $250,000.

Hydrants are required to be inspected and approved before builders can begin constructing homes.

In a press release Thursday afternoon, Leinbach said the responsibility for inspecting this particular hydrant would have been Las Vegas Valley Water District's, but a spokesperson at that Water District said the hydrant fell under the jurisdiction of the North Las Vegas Water District.

Leslie Long, the city's director of utilities, referred calls from the Sun on Thursday to North Las Vegas spokeswoman Brenda Johnson, who did not immediately return repeated phone calls Thursday evening and early this morning.

Leinbach said fire inspectors said that after the fire it looked like someone had dug into the ground near the hydrant where a street valve would be located. That valve, if closed, would not allow water to flow through the hyrdant. Leinbach said the fire inspectors suspect someone "dug around the hydrant to open the valve."

"The valve had been closed probably," Leinbach said. "Since we didn't see anybody fix, it we can't be certain."

Leinbach said inspections happen on a regular basis. For a residential building, the contractor installs the hydrant and the water district inspects it. He said hydrants might turned off sometimes for construction or water system repairs.

"There's enough inspection along the way this usually doesn't happen," he said "The system is in place and it works the vast majority of the time. ... That water is literally the lifeblood of what the fire department does."