City of Las Vegas firefighters head into the Alpine Motel Apartments after a fatal early morning fire in downtown Las Vegas Saturday, Dec. 21, 2019. Six people died and 13 injured after a fire in the three-story apartment complex, authorities said.
Published Saturday, Dec. 21, 2019 | 9:35 a.m.
Updated Saturday, Dec. 21, 2019 | 2:03 p.m.
Six people died and 13 were injured in an apartment fire Saturday morning that sent smoke ravaging through a three-story complex in downtown Las Vegas and caused panicked residents to leap through windows to escape, authorities said.
Once the origin of the blaze was found, the flames in the single unit were doused in seconds, but not before they sparked a trail of chaos and death in the Alpine Motel Apartments at 213 N. Ninth St., said Las Vegas Fire & Rescue spokesman Tim Szymanski.
The cause of the fire was under investigation, Szymanski said, noting that investigators learned that the building didn’t have heating and residents reported using stoves to stay warm. The cause appears to be accidental and not criminal in nature, he added.
Multiple 911 callers at 4:13 a.m. reported the fire. Some residents were hanging out of windows at the structure as firefighters arrived. Several jumped and were injured, the department said.
Five of the injured were in critical condition, including a pregnant woman, Szymanski said.
Rescue crews arrived to find heavy smoke billowing from older building and a battalion leader instantly asked for resources to be doubled, Szymanski said.
A group of residents gathered near the complex in late morning along with an employee of the complex, who told them it wasn’t safe to go back. One of those residents was Audrey Palmer.
Palmer said a man knocked on her second-floor door with news the complex was in flames. He told her that he tried pulling a fire alarm, but that it didn’t work.
Palmer said she sprung into action, knocking on doors to relay the warning to her neighbors. There was screaming and chaos, she added.
Seven adults and five children tried to flee through two sets of stairs, but that the smoke was “too much,” Palmer said.
That’s when she led them to her room, where they decided to jump out the window, she said, pointing at the disheveled blinds at her window. The kids were lowered; the adults leaped, she said. Her wife was hospitalized with a broken arm, and Palmer only scraped her knee, she said.
“It was sad,” said Palmer, who’d lived at the complex for seven years. “The pregnant lady jumped out” the third floor.
One of the fatal victims, she said, had asked her Friday to borrow her phone to call her son. But Palmer said her battery was dead and could only tell the woman where she could charge up.
“Yeah, we’re like family...in the building, we’re all like family,” said Palmer, increasingly emotional.
A woman who did not identify herself said she was looking for her husband, who lived in the complex and wasn’t carrying an ID when the fire broke out. She said staffers at hospitals had told her they hadn’t admitted anyone who matched his description.
Metro Police homicide and Clark County coroner investigators were at the scene, but that is standard for fatal fires in Las Vegas, the fire department said. Las Vegas Fire & Rescue and Clark County Fire Department investigators also were on the scene. Code enforcers would also be probing the fire, Szymanski added.
“What we’re trying to do is figure out what happened,” Szymanski said, noting that investigators would need to interview multiple occupants in the building before completing their work. “We want to make sure that something like this never happens again in the city.”
The 41-unit building, which sits on 0.16 acres of land, was built in 1972, according to Clark County property records.
It is owned by Las Vegas Dragon Hotel, a domestic limited-liability company registered to Adolfo Orozco, according to Nevada records. Three other motel apartments in the valley are registered to the same company, property records show.
Szymanski also said two cats and one dog died in the blaze. Firefighters saved one dog.
“You cannot imagine how unbearable conditions are inside of a building when it catches fire,” Szymanski said.
He likened the “poison” released by burning construction and appliance foam to being underwater, lungs immediately rejecting the air when victims attempt to breathe. “It’s like working underneath water, someone’s holding you at the bottom of a swimming pool and not letting you out,” he said.
Szymanski said all the victims’ skin was covered by soot and that it would also be the case inside of their bodies. Several victims suffered smoke inhalation and fractures, he said.
The department said about 30 to 35 people were displaced, but that the number could increase. The Southern Nevada Red Cross and Las Vegas Office of Emergency Management opened an emergency center at nearby Las Vegas Academy for those affected by the fire, Szymanski said.
“This is the worst fire fatality that we’ve had in the city of Las Vegas since the inception of the Fire Department,” Szymanski said. Previously, its highest fatality number for a single incident was three.
The worst fatal fire in Las Vegas’ history was the 1980 MGM Grand fire in which 85 people died, most from smoke inhalation. The main agency fighting that fire was the Clark County Fire Department, since the incident occurred on the Strip, which is in unincorporated Clark County.
Of those residents gathered at the corner store a few yards away from the complex late Saturday, some carried belongings in bags. A man had a Red Cross blanket draped around his arms, and a young boy had a stuffed Mickey Mouse.
“We’re safe,” said a woman. “We’re safe,” a man responded. “That’s the important thing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
