Seven treated for illness after fire

Five Spokane County firefighters and two ambulance crew members were hospitalized Tuesday evening after being exposed to an unknown toxic substance while putting out a burning garbage truck.

The five men and two women were in stable condition at Sacred Heart Medical Center and expected to be released Thursday night after experiencing shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and skin irritation, said Spokane Fire Department Assistant Chief Brian Schaeffer. The department’s hazmat team stripped and scrubbed the victims outside the hospital, and the team will take samples from the burned truck to try to identify the substance, he said.

The Fire District 4 firefighters were exposed as they worked to extinguish burning garbage from a semitrailer at North Bruce Road and state Highway 206 on Tuesday afternoon.

After responding to and fighting the fire around noon, the fire crew had the truck’s driver attach the cab and pull it to a transfer station near Colbert. Once the truck arrived, some of the garbage was unloaded so fire crews could finish extinguishing the blaze, Schaeffer said.

When the firefighters experienced symptoms, a Deer Park ambulance crew responded, treated the victims and took them to the hospital, where the two paramedics were also admitted after experiencing symptoms.

It took about 45 minutes for the roughly 10-person hazmat team to decontaminate the victims, Schaeffer said.

The cause of the symptoms remained a mystery.

The Deer Park ambulance and a District 4 command vehicle remained cordoned off outside the Sacred Heart emergency room Tuesday evening, waiting for a private contractor to decontaminate them, Schaeffer said.

The garbage truck, operated by a private contractor, was hauling trash from Newport for rail shipment, said Ed Lewis, Fire District 4 chief.