Fire Kills 6 at Residential Hotel in Reno

Police Say Woman Intentionally Started Blaze

A blaze started by a woman who deliberately set fire to her mattress killed six people at a residential hotel in Reno, Nev., police said. More than 30 were injured, some when they jumped from the hotel's second- and third-story windows.

Flames fully engulfed the historic brick Mizpah Hotel, home to 60 to 80 people, shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday. The hotel is in downtown Reno, near several casinos, but the fire did not spread to other buildings.

Hotel resident Valerie Moore, 47, was in an ongoing dispute with another resident and, in the midst of an argument, dragged her mattress to his front door and set it on fire, Reno Police Chief Michael Poehlman said. Moore was arrested yesterday on arson and multiple murder charges.

Late Tuesday night, firefighters rescued some residents with ladders, while city workers who happened to be nearby fixing streetlights in a cherry picker helped others climb from their windows. Many residents jumped to safety.

One victim died as rescue workers carried him out of the building, about 90 minutes after the blaze began, and five more bodies were found at about 2 a.m. More victims could be buried in the rubble at the north end of the hotel, where the roof collapsed, but it will take days to dig through the area because the building is unstable, Poehlman said.

Some residents told local media they had lived there for many years and lost all their possessions.

"That was home," Bruce Beeker, 53, tearfully told the Reno Gazette-Journal at the scene. "I've got everything in there. I don't even have socks or underwear. I have nothing."

The hotel was built in 1922 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. It had been recently renovated. The building had smoke alarms but no sprinklers.