Las Vegas firefighters snuff early morning blaze in lighting store
Las Vegas firefighters extinguished a large early morning fire Tuesday at Statewide Lighting Center on East Sahara Avenue near Maryland Parkway.
7:00AM UPDATE: Have KNOCKDOWN on 1-sto portion of bldg, crews have handle on incident, still working on remainder of fire in 2-sto storage area, no injuries reported, cause under investigation, E Sahara Ave still closed, will be on scene for a few more hours. 800 E Sahara Ave. pic.twitter.com/pENxKKlH08
— Las Vegas FireRescue (@LasVegasFD) January 18, 2022
Crews responded at 3:43 a.m. to find heavy smoke inside the building. The cause of the two-alarm fire at 804 E. Sahara Ave. is under investigation.
“When we got here it appeared there were was a dumpster and some pallets burning inside the building,” said Las Vegas Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski. “The smoke was very heavy. They could see an orange glow toward the rear of the building but they couldn’t get to it.”
Szymanski said the building is a very large retail structure and warehouse that sells lighting fixtures. Roughly 15 employees work at the business.
“The employees said the last time they were here they locked up the building at 4 p.m. yesterday and everything appeared to be fine,” he said.
He said as firefighters battled the blaze, the fire broke through the roof of the structure and it continued to burn for nearly three hours.
No injuries were reported. Several lanes of East Sahara were closed before the street was fully reopened just after 9 a.m.
“The owner told us there are homeless people in the area but he’s very good about securing his building and they were never able to get inside the building,” Szymanski said. “He feels confident it has nothing to do with that.”
Several employees and a manager of the building stood outside the building as it burned. They declined to comment.
Contact Glenn Puit by email at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter.