Pahrump Valley Times Nye County's Largest Circulation Newspaper
CURRENT WEATHER: Clear, 37°


News
News
Opinion
Sports
Obituaries
Archives
Search

Classifieds
All Classifieds
Employment
Real Estate
Autos
Merchandise

Our Newspaper
Archive
Contact Us
How To Advertise
Subscriptions


 
Top Story

February 25, 2005

Beatty firefighters save mobile home

PVT



RICHARD STEPHENS / PVT
Beatty firefighters extinguish a fire in a mobile home on Desert Vista. The residence was saved by early smoke detection by department member Ray Valdez.
The Beatty Volunteer Fire Department got lucky Wednesday evening. What could easily have become a dangerous fire was prevented when one of the department's members, Ray Valdez, spotted smoke coming from an abandoned trailer at the former Desert Vista mobile home park.

Valdez determined that the smoke was coming from a burning mattress and called the fire in. The blaze was quickly extinguished, but had it gone undiscovered, the trailer could have rapidly become fully engulfed, and fire could have spread into the collection of dilapidated mobiles and other structures on the property adjacent to the Beatty elementary and middle schools.

The department has been working for nearly a year to get the property condemned as a dangerous public nuisance.

County officials who toured the property last summer readily agreed that it, and two others they were shown were dangerous public nuisances, but there was considerable delay in getting a proper legally worded notice prepared to send to the property owners.

Recently, the department received the required document from the district attorney's office. According to its wording, once the owners of the property receive the notice, they have five days to abate the nuisance, after which the county can take action to do so and bill the owners.

This fire, which was most likely caused by vagrant occupancy or by children playing or smoking in the abandoned trailer, underscores the dangers posed by such abandoned and unsecured structures, which have become commonplace in virtually every Nye County community.



For comment or questions, please e-mail webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com
Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 -
| Privacy Policy