(UPI) — Five people died, 13 were injured and 30 to 35 were displaced from their homes in an early-morning fire at an apartment building in downtown Las Vegas on Saturday, according to Las Vegas Fire and Rescue.
An 8 a.m. Facebook post from the fire department said five people died and that the incident was under investigation. At an 11 a.m. press conference streamed on Facebook, fire department spokesman Tim Szymanski said one more victim had died, increasing the number of deceased had increased to six.
“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. The previous record number of deaths for the department, which was created in 1907, was three, according to Szymanski.
Szymanski said at 4:13 a.m. firefighters responded to a two-alarm fire at the Alpine Motel Apartments, where they found residents hanging and jumping from second-floor windows, and trying to escape using sheets.
Szymanski said the fire appears to have originated in the kitchen in one of the units. Residents told investigators that the building did not have heat and that they had been using their kitchen stoves as a heat source.
According to Szymanski, 10 people were taken to area hospitals by ambulance and three others traveled to the hospital on their own. Five people, one of them a pregnant woman, were in critical condition.
A witness told Fox 5 Vegas several of the residents were women and children and described the neighborhood as a “close-knit community.”
“This is a perfect storm for fires. This is the period that makes firefighters the most nervous, in addition to the fourth of July each year,” Szymanski said.
“We’ve got Christmas trees, candles, heating devices. We’ve always told people never to use the stove as a heating device. They’re not designed for that, and what happens is they can overheat and catch fire, and this might be one of those cases, but again, it remains under investigation.”
He also said there will be an investigation to see if there were any code violations at the building.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the three-story building was built in 1972 and has 41 units, and the owner since 2013 is listed as Las Vegas Dragon Hotel LLC.
Two cats and one dog died in the fire, and one dog was rescued by animal control.
The American Red Cross of Nevada was assisting those affected in the fire.
Szymanski estimated damage to the building at $475,000.
