Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006 | 8:39 a.m.
As he cleaned his pool one day recently, with a boulder-covered hillside serving as a picturesque backdrop to his home, Gary Burke relished the quiet lifestyle he expected when he moved to a senior community in Henderson.
But on this day, the appearance on the hill behind his home of a familiar woman in an orange vest told Burke, 67, and his 69-year-old wife, Nadine, that their serenity was about to be interrupted.
Burke called out to the woman, known to him as Penny, who responded with this brief message: The blasting starts in 25 minutes.
In what has become a familiar drill, Burke began calling and e-mailing neighbors, who in turn contacted others, especially those who are ill, live alone or are likely to be frightened by the impending blast.
Many have already prepared, removing pictures from walls and taking care to separate glassware in cabinets to avoid damage. Burke, meanwhile, races through his home, opening doors and windows to protect against a strong air blast.
And then the waiting begins.
Welcome to life in the blast zone, the areas of Henderson where frequent hillside detonations serve as gratingly audible punctuation marks to the rock-clearing work being done to make way for future homes.
"It is on my mind when I wake up in the morning," said Tony Cutropia, one of the neighbors Burke called.
"I wonder when the blast is going to come. You are not sitting around waiting for it, but you know there is going to be a blast. At the beginning I was more anxious than I am now. I hate to say I am getting used to it because I am not. But I am getting more used to it."
Despite the blasts' frequency, however, others are far from "used to it" - and believe they should not have to become accustomed to the jarring daily disruptions.
"You are off center all the time," said Peggy Moore, who has long since removed plates dislodged from a rack in previous blasts. A memo from Sanders Construction, the company doing the blasting, urged residents to keep glassware separated at least a quarter of an inch to avoid damage from the house-rattling blasts.
"You are not prepared for when it happens. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't, but you can never be prepared for the severity. You are sitting there waiting for something to fall and crack."
Only days before, Henderson had signed off on the blasting, even after residents told the City Council they feared it would trigger rock slides. An engineering firm hired by the city, though, issued a report that concluded that the risk of a blast-induced rock slide was low.
But that assurance provides little comfort to the Burkes and their neighbors in Sun City MacDonald Ranch, a community for seniors 55 and older. Because many are retired, residents spend a lot of time at home during the day when the blasting occurs. In other communities where more people work, the blasting is perhaps less of a nuisance.
Even more worrisome, a Dec. 20 blast that exceeded city-imposed decibel limits broke windows and caused other damage to dozens of homes in nearby Tiano de Terrazo.
"I lived in California for 30 years and know what earthquakes are like," said Ernie Tate, another MacDonald Ranch resident. "It feels like a minor earthquake. You feel the vibration and hear the noise. The house moves. You can feel it in your feet."
Tate and Phil Prentice have removed pictures and pieces of art from their walls because the items moved in previous explosions. They have even put tape across the windows to prevent damage.
As the minutes tick down, Burke, as he often does when he knows an explosion is coming, stands on the porch with his digital camera to document the blast.
The tension builds as Burke's neighbors, concerned about what's ahead, gather in their back yards and glance anxiously at the hillsides above.
The 25 minutes pass, but nothing happens. Burke called a Sanders superintendent, who, without telling him why, said the blast has been delayed for one hour.
Taking advantage of the delay, Burke uses his cell phone to call even more friends.
After nearly an hour's wait, the tension mounts again as two men appear on the ridge and look down.
A bighorn sheep also appears and runs along the hillside toward the blast area, but is shooed away by a worker.
Seconds later, the piercing sound of an air horn, set off by a Sanders crew member on the ridge, causes some of the neighbors to jump. It is followed by a police-like siren that sounds another warning in the distance.
Suddenly, the bighorn sheep returns closer to the blast site, and the Burkes, fearing for its safety, yell out to the man on the ridge - to no avail.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The ground vibrates in waves, causing the patio to shake and rattle for three to four seconds. Their dogs Bebe and Rika, who always seem to sense the blasts before the Burkes can feel them, run on the patio, barking. If the couple had been inside their house, they would hear the rattling of dishes, routine during strong blasts.
Above the ridge line - a thick white cloud of dust rises into the air. But fortunately, no boulders tumble down the hill as the Burkes and others had feared.
For Air Force veteran Bill Hummons, the blasts remind him of mortar rounds in Vietnam. He said he constantly worries about boulders rolling down the hill and into his living room.
"I'll just be sitting on the couch watching TV, and I feel it shaking underneath me," Hummons said. "The windows rattle, and the knives fall off onto the counter every time there is a blast."
No matter how often the blasts occur, the break in peace and quiet for those closest to them still frightens many people and makes hearts pound faster.
Most residents do not know precisely when the next blast will come or how intense it will be. Sometimes, they feel two blasts a day that give their homes a good shake, while at other times, they hardly notice.
"You think that when you retire you can sit back and relax," Nadine Burke said. "But it's frustrating. I wish they would just ease up."
The blasting started on the hillsides near Sun City MacDonald Ranch in late 2004 and spread to other parts of Henderson in 2005 as developers started to clear hillsides of rock for home and road construction.
Sanders officials say the blasting probably will continue for at least another nine months to a year for hillside developments to be known as Canyons and Crystal Ridge. Some blasts, though, will be far enough away that residents will no longer feel them, company officials say.
Many homeowners, however, complain that for now, they feel like they are living in a war zone.
"We feel like we are being held hostage by civilian terrorists," Gary Burke said. "It is really sad. It is affecting everyone. We can't lead a normal life. We don't know how much damage it's causing, and we have to be prepared all the time. If rocks come down, we are going to have to evacuate."
Even residents who tend to shrug off the blasts as a relatively minor annoyance cannot escape their impact. Gary Sternberg, for instance, said the blasts do not bother him nearly as much as they do other Sun City MacDonald Ranch residents. Even so, his reaction is shaped by sympathy for his neighbors.
"I don't worry about it day to day," Sternberg said. "I hear the explosions once in a while and see the cloud of dust. But people here talk about it all the time. I am part of this community, and we need to stick together."
A group of Sun City MacDonald Ranch residents has petitioned the City Council for a more restrictive ordinance that would limit the blasts' intensity and create a better warning system.
Many blame the blasts for cracks they have found in their interior and exterior walls, separated tile, nails popping out of walls, and jammed doors and windows.
A city consultant, however, blames the wind, temperature and humidity fluctuations for the damage. That explanation, though, just adds to the frustration of some residents who feel no one is listening to them.
Henderson Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers, who said she and her colleagues sympathize with residents, wants the city to consider setting blasts at specific times such as noon and 3 p.m. so that residents will at least know when they are coming.
"This is not about stopping or slowing development but striking a balance between development and nuisance issues," Cyphers said.
"I can only imagine what they are going through. This is not a science issue, damage issue or a safety issue. It is a quality of life issue. These people have chosen Henderson as a place to retire. They saw the beautiful boulder views and said this is the place for me. They never imagined in their retirement years they would be dealing with blasting in their back yards."
Moore said what happened to the bighorn sheep the day of the blast epitomizes what residents are going through, being caught in the middle of something without knowing what will happen next.
When the blast detonated, the bighorn turned and ran in the opposite direction.
"We are a lot like the bighorn sheep," Moore said.
"We are living day to day and walking along and things seem to be calm. And then all of a sudden, you are scared and frightened by rolling thunder under the ground. It frightens them as it does us. We came here to commune with nature and our neighbors, not bulldozers and blasting companies."
Brian Wargo can be reached at 259-4011 or at [email protected].
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