LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – FOX5’s Victoria Saha spoke with Clark County Fire Investigator Ron Mauro.
He spoke to us about the Langhorne Creek fire response. It was an early morning October fire that needed crews from all over the Las Vegas Valley.
Watch the full story through the web player above. See the transcript below:
“They all helped incredibly,” he said. “Coming together like that on a scene like that for a family was paramount.”
Saha: “How hard is it to pinpoint where it could have started in a massive house fire?”
Mauro: “It’s extremely hard, we have to dig the scene layer by layer. We can’t go in and remove everything at once.”
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The flames were so strong, and the structure collapsed down to the garage, he said.
Because of the collapse, firefighters had to stop what they were doing and get out.
Mauro and his team would later find the bodies of two children and adults. The Clark County coroner identified the four as: 48-year-old Ibrahim Adem, 43-year-old Abdusalem Adem, 7-year-old Anaya Adem and 6-year-old Aaliyah Adem.
Saha: “How are you guys doing after that?”
Mauro: “I’m not going to lie, especially people with families, its very hard. Dealing with the public, they don’t get to see what we see and they should have to, those are the ghosts that we live with. Those are the things we carry with us for the rest of our lives.”
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No matter how devastating it may be, investigators still have to do their job.
Mauro: “As fire investigators, we always work from least damaged areas to most damaged to where we think the area of origin may be.”
Saha: “How do you determine if something came from the second floor or top floor if its all down in a pile of rubble?”
Mauro: “That’s where rebuilding a scene comes in, and you have to come up with a hypothesis. If I can’t have a definitive hypothesis that I end up with, that I can’t disprove, I have to go with undetermined.”
For this fire, Mauro couldn’t say anything more except they do not think it’s suspicious.
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