LETTER: Plenty of blame for the Alpine fire tragedy
The Review-Journal has done a great job of covering all aspects of the deadly Alpine Motel Apartments fire that took place on Dec. 21. Las Vegas Fire and Rescue, assisted by the Clark County Fire Department and in their usual professional manner, handled the fire quickly and saved many lives. I find no fault there. When it comes to our other levels of government, there is plenty of blame to go around.
History has shown that it usually takes a large life-loss fire for government officials to enact retroactive laws and for fire departments to establish adequate inspection policies that prevent these tragedies from happening again. Fire prevention is a responsibility of the fire department, and fire inspections should remain a department responsibility at all levels, including the units in the fire station.
Los Angeles has gone through the tragedy of large life-loss fires in older, center hall apartment buildings with no sprinkler systems. After these fires, building laws were enacted that were not terribly burdensome to the property owners, and fire prevention policies were put into place that included inspections by field firefighting units. To my knowledge, there has not been a large life-loss fire in this type of apartment building since.
The safety of our citizens is the most important responsibility of our city, county and state officials. I like Mayor Carolyn Goodman. But she said when referring to the fire that “we did our job.” Well, doing the job the way it is being done caused six people to die terrible deaths and seriously injured 13 people. It is time to make some serious changes.
