Family displaced after house fire

Josh Hofer believes faulty wiring may have caused the fire that drove him and his family out of their rental home at 1524 W. Sharp Ave. on Monday night.

Hofer said he was “dinking around in the basement” about 6:30 p.m. and checked the circuit breakers when he couldn’t turn on a light. He reset a breaker, but discovered the problem actually was a loose bulb.

Then, Hofer said, “the smoke alarm went off about two minutes later.”

Upstairs, he found a wall and curtain burning in the bedroom of his 3-year-old daughter, Macy. Hofer said the fire was near an electrical outlet that hadn’t been used in the three years the family had lived in the house.

Macy wasn’t in the bedroom at the time, and her mother, Tiffiany Hofer, got her out of the house. No one was injured.

Josh Hofer tried unsuccessfully to put out the fire while waiting for firefighters.

“I shot a full fire extinguisher bottle on it, and it didn’t make any difference,” he said.

“It was a pretty heavy fire when we got here,” said Spokane Fire Department Battalion Chief Mike Inman.

Although the fire was confined to the bedroom where it started, there was smoke damage throughout the house. Electricity to the home was cut off until an investigator could determine the cause, Inman said.