Grass fire burns 10 acres

An air tanker dumped water on a wildfire Thursday in an industrial area of north Spokane as fire crews worked to keep the blaze away from nearby power lines.

The fire burned an estimated 10 acres of tall grass and small pine trees near a cemetery at East Hawthorne and North Market roads. Propelled northeast by 5- to 10-mph winds, the plume of smoke generated by the blaze threatened power lines snaking through the intersection, said Department of Natural Resources spokesman Steve Harris. Smoke under the wires can cause them to ground out and trigger a power outage, he said.

“These are main, main lines,” he said.

No property damage or injuries were reported Thursday afternoon, although the flames and heavy smoke alarmed some apartment residents less than a mile west. Police temporarily closed Hawthorne between North Nevada Street and Market.

It took 19 fire engines and a 10-member crew less than two hours to contain the blaze, which a passing motorist reported at about 1:50 p.m. Firefighters wanted to prevent it from jumping Hawthorne or Market and spreading uphill through larger trees, where it would move faster and be harder to contain, Harris said.

A fire investigator found Thursday that unknown people burning material started the blaze.

The tanker made frequent flights over the area, dropping water from Lake Spokane, because the fire was initially too hot for crews to attack it directly, Harris said. The flat, sandy ground where the fire started helped crews control it, he said.

Carol Hensley, 62, woke up from her afternoon nap to a bird’s-eye view of flames whipping through the trees just east of her top-floor unit at the Deer Run at North Point apartments. The large complex, located west of Nevada near Holland Avenue, borders a forested area west of the fire.

“It was scary,” Hensley said. “I’ve never been this close to a fire before.”

Hensley contacted the Fire Department and asked whether she should be prepared to leave.

“They told me it was not contained. I said: ‘What the heck does that mean?’ and he told me it means the wind could carry it any way it wanted,” Hensley said.

Dennis Bean, a mechanic at Norcan Parts and Equipment, wasn’t concerned about the smoke billowing north of the business on Market Street, where hundreds of Caterpillar tractors littered the yard.

“If it got into Hanson’s, I was going to jump in a Cat and get a line around it,” Bean said, referring to R.A. Hanson Company or RAHCO International, a large equipment manufacturing business just west of Market on Magnesium Road.

A large crowd of spectators gathered on a bluff along Market to watch the fire from less than a quarter mile away.

“The plane was really exciting,” said Julie Simmons, 19, of Medical Lake. She and a friend pulled over after seeing smoke on the way to get ice cream.

Deer Park residents Rob Edwards and Marvin Wheeler, who fight wildfires, also stopped.

“I shouldn’t say this, but we were hoping to get a call,” Wheeler, 36, said.

Reporter Sara Leaming contributed to this report.