Fire takes 14 hours to extinguish

Fire crews worked 14 hours fighting a blaze Friday that destroyed a roofing company warehouse east of downtown Spokane.

The two-alarm fire initially was reported just after midnight at 223 E. Riverside Ave., a building that houses the office, equipment and supplies for Spokane Commercial Roofing. Eventually, more than two-thirds of the city’s available firefighters were called to fight the blaze, Battalion Chief Steve Sabo said.

“I think it was already in the process of collapsing when the first crews got here,” Sabo said.

Nobody was injured. As of Friday evening fire investigators had not discovered the cause of the fire that reduced a very large warehouse into a smoldering heap of twisted metal and smoking wood, Sabo said.

Weather conditions kept smoke trapped close to the ground, said Lt. Chris Phillips, a fire investigator.

“We had several calls of smoke in the area,” Phillips said.

The warehouse is on a gravel alley one block north of Sprague Avenue. It’s bordered on the north by railroad tracks. Access issues made fighting the fire difficult, Sabo said.

Crews at Fire Station 1 “could see the flames when they came out of the station,” Sabo said. “But the access is limited. It’s a secluded location.”

Crews had to find a way to fight the fire in a narrow area between the building and railroad tracks, he said.

“As soon as they got on scene, they had a lot of arcing power lines. With a metal building, there’s a significant concern for electrocution,” he said.

The metal siding hindered firefighting in other ways, too. Crews remained into the afternoon Friday to spray fires that flared from underneath the wreckage.

“The metal keeps the heat in and the water out,” Sabo said. “It makes it difficult when it collapses onto things that are burning.”

A contractor was called to bring in heavy equipment to move the twisted metal for firefighters, fire investigator Capt. Mike Zambryski said.

The first crews just after midnight found the gate to the property – which is surrounded by a 6-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire – locked and shut. They used bolt cutters to get inside, Phillips said.

The crews then broke out the window of a Dodge pickup and moved it away from the flames.

Phillips said he checked with neighboring business owners and they reported no problems with vandalism or thefts. Zambryski said the Fire Department has not had any problems in the area with fires.

“It’s pretty well fenced and secured,” Phillips said. “It would be pretty purposeful to climb over that stuff to start a fire.”

But fire investigators were just starting their work Friday.

Phillips said the last employee who was working Thursday night left about 10 p.m. and had been building stairs with a screw gun. That employee said she shut off the breaker box before leaving, Phillips said.