Home, Business Destroyed By Fires

Fires left a Spokane family homeless and destroyed a Spokane Valley business Monday.

No one was injured in either blaze.

City firefighters spent two hours Monday morning battling a West Spokane residential fire that gutted a rental home and sent a family of four into emergency housing.

The fire started around 5 a.m. in a laundry room at 2108 W. Maxwell, said department Battalion Chief Joe Stapleton.

Everything in the home, rented by Mary and Terry Birnie, was destroyed. The cause of the fire is under investigation, Stapleton said.

Investigators said one of the two children at home at the time smelled smoke and roused the family. They escaped the one-story home through a rear door, said Stapleton.

The family said they have no renters’ insurance. After receiving some furniture from Spokane Red Cross workers, the family arranged for temporary housing with friends.

The second fire destroyed a building at 7915 E. Trent. Joyce Fulford had been stocking the building with used furniture for the store she hoped to open there soon.

Neither the building nor its contents is insured.

Fulford said she lost “a couple of thousand dollars” worth of used furniture.

Building owner Ed Kramer said he constructed the building next to his own home in the 1950s, and repaired televisions there for many years. It later housed a dry-cleaning business, he said.

No one was inside the building when it caught fire about 9 a.m. The cause is still under investigation, said Paul Chase, a Valley Fire District inspector.

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