By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
A parked car burst into flames in the Moapa Valley High School student parking lot on Wednesday, Dec. 1. At around 8:15 am that day, it was reported that an older model Toyota Camry belonging to one of the students was on fire in the parking lot.
School staff tried to extinguish the blaze quickly by using a number of fire extinguishers. While this slowed it down a bit, the fire was not extinguished and within a few minutes the front end of the vehicle was fully involved in flames.
Moapa Valley Fire District firefighters from Overton Station #74 and Moapa Station #72 responded and were able to extinguish the fire quickly within about five minutes according to MVFD Chief Stephen Neel.
“There was nothing suspicious in nature about this fire,” Neel said., “It is a bit hard to tell the exact cause of a car fire. But it usually is something electrical which appeared to be the case here as well.”
The smoke from the fire did get into the ventilation system of the school and caused a heavy chemical burn smell inside the building, according to MVHS Principal Hal Mortensen.
“We quickly shut off the AC system units to keep the smoke from being blown into classrooms,” Mortensen said. “There was a pretty heavy smoke smell inside for a while. But it was gone by about noon time.”
During the incident, the school was was put into a “shelter in place” alert with all students being kept inside the classrooms, according to MVHS Principal Hal Mortensen.
No one was injured in the incident.
