A fire started by teenagers playing with fireworks raced up a dry hillside and destroyed three homes, but firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze and no one was injured, fire officials said.
A fourth house was heavily damaged and a fifth was slightly damaged by the fire Tuesday night a few miles north of downtown, said Fire Division Chief Larry Farr.
“Everything is gone, everything we had in this world except our vehicles,” Teresa Franklin said.
Victims and neighbors estimated the value of the houses, which stood 15 to 20 feet apart, at $250,000 to $300,000.
Investigators located eyewitnesses, and two boys in their early teens promptly admitted their role in the fire, Farr said.
The boys were allowed to remain in their parents’ custody while investigators discuss the case with prosecutors, he said.
More than 50 firefighters fought the blaze, which engulfed the first home within minutes while fire crews were still en route, he said. Six adults and two youths were displaced by the fire.
Mount Charleston fire repulsed
A convoy of firefighters from California rolled into Nevada on Tuesday to join about 120 federal, state and local firefighters who worked to stop a wildfire from cresting a ridge and burning toward about 350 homes in Mount Charleston, about 35 miles from Las Vegas.
Connie Kaczmarek, a clerk at the Mount Charleston Hotel, said that after some harrowing hours Monday, the firefighting effort appeared to be going well.
“There’s light smoke, and helicopters with water bags are going over,” she said from the 66-room lodge about two miles from where a truck crashed and sparked the blaze Monday.
Kaczmarek said the hotel had one remaining paying guest and opened the rest of its rooms to firefighters.
“They come, they eat, they sleep and they pretty much go back out,” she said. “They’re saving us. They’re doing us a huge, huge service.”
