Woman, 77, loses home, dog in morning fire

Mavis Wendt, 77, sat on a blue plastic recycling bin as Lt. Mike Zambryski knelt beside her Friday morning and told her that her mobile home and all her possessions had just been destroyed.

Wendt, who had been away visiting a cemetery with a friend, clutched the butt of a cigarette as she listened to details of the fire at 4911 N. Florida, space 12, that killed her dog, Sandy.

“Everything I owned was in there, my Bible, my pictures of my mom and dad – pictures that can’t be replaced,” she said. “I’m just really shaky inside. I’m on the verge of crying.”

Zambryski, a Spokane Fire Department fire investigator, said the blaze started in Wendt’s living room and may have been started by a cigarette. The home was destroyed.

Neighbor Jan Kemp said her son came running about 10:30 a.m. and said that Wendt’s trailer was on fire. Kemp said she ran toward the smoke and called 911 on her cordless phone.

“We thought she was inside,” Kemp said. “I saw smoke coming out. I crawled on my stomach, trying to get in the front. The sliding door was hot, so I didn’t break through.”

Neighbor Steve Buskirk ran around to the other side and was able to break open the back door. “I went through the porch, and flames were rolling up around the door,” Buskirk said. “I got the back door opened and pulled out the cat. Then I tried to and got her back window open to her bedroom, but she wasn’t there.”

He yelled into the home but got no response. “It was scary,” Buskirk said. “Just a gut feeling inside – we were worried about her.”

Spokane Fire Department Battalion Chief Craig Cornelius said six companies and 22 firefighters responded to the fire.

“We had a report that there possibly was an elderly woman in there,” Cornelius said. “As soon as they got here, they were in immediately to do the search.”

As Cornelius described the fire, Wendt’s daughter, Gloria Leckman, 57, arrived. Cornelius told her that Wendt was OK but Sandy, the coyote-Labrador mix, had been killed. “There was nothing we could do,” Cornelius told Leckman. “The fire was going very good when we got here.”

Leckman said her mother, who is legally blind, stopped making insurance payments a year and a half ago. “I canceled it,” said Mavis Wendt, who had her hair up in curlers and under a scarf. “I don’t have much money. Boy, I just live check to check.”

Wendt will turn 78 on Sunday. “I’m starting to choke up, but I’m fighting it,” she said.