Pullman firefighters cause of early-morning blaze

Pullman firefighters likely caused a fire that flared at 1 a.m. in a house they had been using for training just hours earlier. The fire department said in a news release this morning that the blaze was suspicious because it was burning in an area of the house that hadn’t been used in the training exercise. In a follow-up release, the department said an ember from the training fires could have sparked the new blaze. The fire at 1530 Stadium Way was burning on an upper floor at the back of the house, the fire department’s first statement on the blaze said. Training exercises had been conducted at the front of the house on the first floor. In addition, a door to the house was open. “Following a room-by-room search by (fire prevention office Rich) Dragoo and fire training officer George Brown, Dragoo determined that something as small as an ember in a ceiling support beam, giving changing air currents, would have been enough to rekindle the fire from earlier in the day,” a Friday afternoon news release said. The experience will help Dragoo teach firefighters to “make sure that all embers are extinguished before leaving a structure,” the release said.