Fire destroys north county home

A semirural home in northern Spokane County was destroyed by fire Wednesday night, but no one was injured.

Fire District 4 spokesman Pat Humphries said a tenant who rented the daylight basement of the one-story house came home shortly after 7 p.m. and discovered the basement was burning.

The homeowner, who lived in the upstairs portion of the home at 21415 N. Little Spokane Drive, was at work.

Humphries said flames were shooting out most of the windows when firefighters arrived, and they were hampered by the house’s distance from the road and its proximity to the Little Spokane River.

“We had to lay about 800 feet of hose to reach it,” Humphries said, adding that there was “only very limited access to the river side of the house.”

It took about an hour to bring the fire under control, but the house continued to burn.

Humphries said the basement’s cinderblock wall collapsed in a couple of places and, at 9:30 p.m., the home was still too hazardous for firefighters to investigate the cause.