LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Massive fires across the Vegas Valley have destroyed several apartment complexes that were under construction including one earlier this week that injured a construction worker and firefighter.
These types of fires are among the dangerous and destructive but what can be done to prevent them? One of those major fires was just off the 215 and Durango at the Kaktus Life Apartments. It is now being rebuilt using an anti-fire spray on every piece of lumber. Friday, FOX5 revisited the site to check on progress and spoke with the team tasked with ensuring it doesn’t burn again.
The fire broke out on June 20, 2023, as the apartment complex was well into its construction. It was one of the largest fires the Vegas Valley has seen in years.
The fire sent embers across the freeway and burned for days destroying hundreds of partially completed apartments. Damage was estimated at $100 million by Clark County. Silvio Lanzas, a firefighter for more than 30 years, was at a firefighting conference on the Strip that day.
“It was a windy day, so you had embers flying for quite a distance, starting new fires,” Lanzas recounted. Lanzas explains large construction site fires are extremely dangerous.
“They’re essentially matchsticks stacked on top of each other with no fire protection systems at all,” Lanzas revealed.
Lanzas, now Chief Operating Officer of M-Fire Suppression, and his team are making sure it does not happen again as the apartment complex is rebuilt. As crew add the wood framing building out the new apartments, a team comes in behind them and sprays the raw lumber.
“We have completed almost 500 projects with our company across the United States. We currently have about 25 projects that we’re working on today across the United States. One of them, notably being the Kaktus project,” Lanzas shared. Lanzas says it will not burn again.
“Wood is very, very vulnerable to fire in this state prior to drywall, prior to fire sprinkler systems, prior to all the things that help us stop a fire once the building is built,” Lanzas explained.
M-Fire Suppression says their fire inhibitor spray is non-toxic. Learn more about it on the company’s website: https://www.mfiresuppression.com/
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