By JOAN WHITELY – Las Vegas Review-Journal

The Meridian Luxury Suites bills itself as a “refined getaway in the heart of the bustling Las Vegas Strip.”

But for all the luxury, one of the Meridian’s five-story buildings has gone without reliable fire protection for about eight months.

And yet early this year, both the Clark County Fire Department and Nevada State Contractors Board discarded, after only casual investigation, formal complaints alleging that a plumber without proper licensing did a “Mickey Mouse” job on a line that supplies water to room sprinklers and fire-hose hookups throughout a 136-suite building at the Meridian.

In each case, the public agency contacted only the plumbing contractor and Meridian management to explore the complaint. Neither contacted the men who filed the complaints, who had saved a cell-phone photo showing the questionable plumbing before it was buried under about a foot of earth.

Near the Strip, the Meridian is a gated, lushly landscaped condominium project that is converting to hotel use. It consists of five residential buildings plus clubhouse, swimming pools and tennis courts at 250 E. Flamingo Road.

The term “Mickey Mouse job” comes from Eric Edwards, one of two men who filed complaints with the agencies in November regarding what they say is a dangerously deficient plumbing job at the Meridian, performed by HK Plumbing. The plumbing company had fired both men in October, after they expressed dissatisfaction with the work, which was done in late September.

Edwards and Mario Salinas, the other former HK employee, claim both enforcement agencies took at face value a misleading story from Harry Sullard, the HK Plumbing owner, that his company had worked only on a landscaping water line or domestic water line. The two ex-employees said they feared the present fire line will fail in an emergency, which could strand occupants or firefighters inside the building during a fire.

An answering service for HK Plumbing said several times this week that the business was closed until Monday, but logged several requests from the Review-Journal to speak with Sullard.

The two men say neither agency gave them the time of day — until recently, after they brought their dilemma to the newspaper, which then contacted the fire department to learn how it handled the complaint. The men also sent certified letters in late April, restating their worries, to officials they had not contacted earlier, including the state fire marshal, the Clark County manager and the Reno-based chair of the contractors board.

After the letters went out, the two say they received calls from both the contractors board and the county fire department, and have met in person with investigators from each agency.

“He was as red as a bandanna,” is how Edwards described the demeanor of Gordon LaPointe of the contractors board, after Edwards earlier this week gave him details that counter the version of events LaPointe obtained when he talked to HK Plumbing and Meridian staff about the complaint, which the board closed in January.

The county fire department has reopened its complaint as well, county spokeswoman Stacey Welling said Thursday.

County records show that HK pulled a permit for work at the Meridian on Dec. 26, 2007, but the permit does not describe a fire line job.

HK Plumbing lacks the specialized license, issued by the state fire marshal, that’s required to work on fire systems, according to Jim Wright, Nevada’s fire marshal. He said his office sent HK Plumbing a letter on Monday telling it to “cease and desist” work outside the scope of its licenses, and requesting a conference. HK does hold a state contractor’s license and a county business license, which allow it to work on water lines that are not part of a fire system. A nonspecialized plumber is also allowed to do a temporary, emergency repair to a fire line.

Edwards, HK’s former controller, and Salinas, a journeyman plumber, allege HK Plumbing — against Salinas’ advice — repaired a leaking fire line at the Meridian using inferior materials and skipping steps that would keep a high-pressure fire line from coming apart at vulnerable joints.

If the repair failed, ceiling sprinklers would not work and firefighters would have to hook in hoses farther away.

“We’d never done anything like this” job, said Salinas, who worked for HK for nine years. “I felt this was more than what we can handle.”

Salinas said he snuck a picture of the job because he knew HK was skipping permits and inspections.

The two workers say HK’s original assignment at the Meridian last fall was to investigate the source of water pooling outside the building.

“The Meridian Homeowners Association has no knowledge of code violations related to any work completed by a licensed contractor,” Michael Mackenzie, president of the association, said Thursday in a prepared statement. “The safety of our owners and guests is of the utmost importance, and we always welcome the Clark County Fire Department” and other agencies on the property to enforce safety.

After HK dug to expose the leak’s source, it determined the building’s “riser” had a hole, according to Edwards and Salinas. A riser is an expensive right-angled pipe of thick steel that accepts firefighting water from an outdoor line and then routes it into various fire systems, such as sprinklers and pipes with hookups for hoses.

According to the two former workers, HK decided to bypass the costly riser, which violates safety codes. It also created two new 90-degree joints in the outdoor piping, but didn’t encase the joints in concrete as required.

Such a concrete form is called a “thrust block.” It is designed to stabilize a fire line’s joint, so it won’t burst apart under high pressure, according to Terry Taylor, an independent fire consultant from northern Nevada.

When a fire engine is pushing water into a riser, Taylor explained, the pressure is more than double that in a domestic water line.

Edwards and Salinas also allege that HK installed an illegal manual valve on the outdoor line leading to the riser, so that water wouldn’t flood the repair site.

However, after the job was done, HK didn’t remove the valve, which is against code. That means a gardener could one day turn the valve off, not knowing he was cutting off the building’s supply of water to fight fire.

If the contractors board or fire department had contacted the men last year, they say, the building’s fire safety would have been swiftly restored. Following the agencies’ belated overtures, the men directed inspectors to a locked “fire room” in the basement parking structure of the compromised Meridian building. Inside the room, they say, is clear evidence of the abandoned riser and jerry-rigged bypass.

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