HENDERSON, Nev. -- Winds fueled a fast-moving fire Monday that tore through a Henderson condominium. Within minutes, the building went up in flames. The fire hospitalized one woman.
Tylan Crittenden says he heard people panicking and the sound of his neighbor breaking the fire extinguisher glass outside his door at the Mission Ridge Condos on Carnegie Street near Horizon Ridge Parkway.
"I was actually sitting on the coach when I heard the glass shatter, and that's when she said, 'Oh my God, oh my God, somebody help me. My place is on fire,'" Tylan said. "As soon as I opened up the door, smoke filled my house."
Crittenden bolted from his home. The smoky fire quickly became an intense inferno. Neighbors watched in disbelief as the raging flames spread.
Angela Babb and her son Nathan grabbed their cell phones and recorded video as firefighters tackled trouble.
"It was just like taking a squirt gun to the fire. It was like doing nothing for it until they got right on top of it," Angela said. "Just horrifying."
"You could feel the heat all the way over here from the sidewalk, like five hundred feet away," Nathan added.
The Henderson Fire Department says the fire devoured the attic of one condo and spread - damaging eight units.
"The wind was a big factor, the way the direction of the wind was blowing through that attic space and, obviously, the heat conditions (don't) help," Henderson Fire Department Chief Matthew Morris said.
Crittenden believes his neighbor's cigarette may have sparked the blaze.
"She was already out downstairs, shaking and holding her dog, and I had asked her what happened," he said. "She says, 'I was upstairs smoking, and I don't think the cigarette went out all the way.'"
Crittenden says he's relieved his four-year-old daughter left moments before the fire erupted.
"I was supposed to keep her for another day. I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't for her to see her stuff. A lot of memories, man, just gone," he said. "I'm just crushed man."
The smoke was so thick and dark, one woman was hospitalized for smoke inhalation. The fire department hasn't determined an official cause of this fire. The American Red Cross is helping to provide food and clothing to at least seven families affected by the fire.
Photo by Robert Budyach
