Construction crew helps put out brush fire

A small brush fire on the hillside off Summit Boulevard didn’t have a chance to get bigger Thursday because a construction crew from the nearby Kendall Yards project rushed over to apply water, even before the Spokane Fire Department arrived.

The cause of the fire is still unclear, but Spokane Fire Battalion Chief Steve Sabo said that it burned about a third of an acre.

It started about 1:30 p.m. That’s when Butch Encinas’ crew at Kendall Yards saw smoke and headed over with their water truck, normally used for dust control on the job site.

Encinas, a supervisor for Aapex Construction Inc. out of Coeur d’Alene, joked that he didn’t want to see the fire spread to his work site to the east.

The fire near Ohio Avenue burned an area that stretched about 50 yards down the hillside, just off a paved recreational path.

Sabo said it appeared the fire had started down the hill and spread upslope.

Crews will dig a trench around the blackened area’s edge to separate it from other combustibles and apply plenty of water, he said.