Faulty heating devices cause home fires
There were a lot of reports of cars and homes burning in the Valley the week of Nov. 20-26, but most turned out to be minor.
Only two of the reported home fires caused significant damage. A heater set a wall on fire in one home and a malfunctioning wood stove caused another fire that caused $5,000 in damage.
“It was just old and it caught on fire,” said Spokane Valley Fire Department spokesman Bill Clifford of the wood stove.
A fire alarm went off at Inland Imaging on Mission on Nov. 24. Firefighters arrived to find an overheated compressor. “We just unplugged the compressor when we got there and they’ll have to repair it or replace it,” he said.
Three car fires were reported, but only one vehicle was found fully aflame. The other reported vehicles couldn’t be found when firefighters responded. There were 16 vehicle accidents that sent nine people to the hospital. Once at Highway 27 and 24th Street on Nov. 21 sent two drivers to the hospital. One car was severely damaged. “The car had to be cut away to get to the patient,” Clifford said.
A crash on Nov. 22 resulted in a death. An elderly man apparently drove east on Indiana from Sullivan not knowing that the road ended. The 1995 Ford truck he was driving went airborne and crashed onto a boulder. The accident was discovered at 7:58 a.m. “Nobody knows how long he had been sitting there,” he said. “It was obvious the person was deceased.”
Of the 200 total calls for the week, 166 were for medical assistance. Firefighters also responded to a call for a leaking fire hydrant and responded twice to local businesses to let police officers use their ladders to climb up on roofs to investigate burglaries.
One service call Clifford qualified as “strange.” A woman who is well-known for calling 911 for “interesting” issues called to report that she heard generator sounds coming from a neighbor’s house in the early morning hours. Clifford said he wasn’t sure why the call was routed to Valley Fire instead of the police department, but firefighters responded and found nothing wrong.