An office for a mining company went up in flames at 1pm today on Brick Road, just south of Highway 50 and Nye.
Arriving firefighters saw smoke billowing out from under the crawl space under the mobile home/office building. They quickly attacked the blaze by ripping out the skirting and training foamed water to the under-floor area. But the fire spread quickly and unpredictably. Firefighters decided to go inside and track down the fire before it engulfed the whole building. But the fire was moving faster than they may have thought. A short time later, with firefighters inside, the fire burned up through the interior walls, and with the heat coursing upward and collecting in the attic, the fire broke through the roof, sending out a huge fireball. At that same instant, the interior of the structure became engulfed in flame. Fire Battalion Chief Dan Shirey grabbed his radio microphone and ordered everyone inside to get out. At that point, firefighters on the outside trained their fire hoses through windows and other openings to the building in an effort to beat back the flames. Then, one by one, inside-firefighters emerged, all of them okay. They were completely soaked with foamed water, but no doubt happy to be back outside.
Since the structure was already a total loss, the command went out for firefighters to assume a defensive stance, meaning they were going to attack it strictly from the outside. Cause of the fire was an open flame heater underneath the structure used by the occupants to unfreeze the water pipes. Chief Stacey Giomi says unless somebody’s there 24/7 to monitor such an arrangement it’s far better to leave such jobs to professional plumbers.
The structure was being used by a mining company and held computers with company records, most of which were thought to have back-ups elsewhere.
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