Local officials are advocating for change following a Review-Journal series about deadly fires at aging apartment complexes in the Las Vegas Valley. “We need to be far more aggressive,” Clark County Commissioner Larry Brown said. The Review-Journal found that fires have killed 159 people in the valley since 2008. The lethal blazes have been clustered in areas with older homes and apartments, where current safety measures such as sprinklers and interconnected smoke alarms are not required. A major hurdle to improving fire safety is that state law does not require existing apartments to adhere to new safety upgrades required under fire codes adopted after the building is constructed. Local governments must get approval from Nevada’s Board of Examiners before they can adopt safety requirements that are more stringent than state statutes.