Fire breaks out in Logan Street house. / Courtesy photo by Robin Taylor
Updated
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CENTRALIA – Members of the police department joined firefighters in north Centralia this afternoon to begin investigating after a vacant house went up in flames.
Riverside Fire Authority was called around 4:15 to the corner of Logan and Vienna streets for reports of a fully involved structure fire, according to Fire Chief Jim Walkowski.
“It’s reportedly abandoned, it’s had drug activity in the past,” Walkowski said.
At 5:30 p.m. crews were still putting water on the one and a half-story wood-frame home.
Walkowski said they were trying to confirm there was nobody inside. They had various reports, including of someone walking away, he said.
Several neighborhood residents, including young people watched from across the street at the playground of the old Logan School.
Eleven-year-old Ashley Taylor said she, her sister and a friend were at home next door when they smelled smoke.
“And next, the whole front was puking fire,” Ashley said.
Robin Taylor, 15, said they heard “bursting” and glass breaking.
“It was the biggest fire I’ve ever seen,” she said.
The girls said a family with several children used to live there, and sometimes the grown ups come back.
Walkowski said two firefighters were treated at the scene for heat exhaustion. Riverside was joined by departments from Chehalis, rural Chehalis and the Rochester area.
The front of the house was charred. The blaze extended to a detached garage in back, according to Walkowski.
An adjacent home sustained minor radiant heat damage, according to the chief.
Update: Investigators determined there was nobody inside the structure. Walkowski said the residents had moved out about two months ago.
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CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the two firefighters suffered heat exhaustion, not smoke exhaustion.
Smoke billows above burning house on Logan Street. / Courtesy photo by Ashley Taylor
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Flames pour out the front and back of the one and a half story house. / Courtesy photo by Mandy Taylor
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Firefighters knock down blaze on Logan Street in Centralia.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
They don’t let you off because they feel sorry for you. People get let off because the cops in lewis county don’t know how to follow procedure and do things the right way. Half the time people will just take the plea. A quarter of the time people rat and the other quarter of the time, people actually go to trial and win because there is almost always a flaw with the way things went down.
It would be nice to see a patrol car in our area once in a while. A daily drive by would alert police to what is happening in the Logan District but I’m not sure they would do anything about it.
We lived in the little trailer next to it a few years ago, and the people who lived in it then we always had problems with. They constantly had people in and out at all hours of the day/night, people parking in or in front of our driveway, and one on occasion they were all high on whatever drug they used and proceeded to knock on the sides of our house and doors in the middle of the night. It was never ending.
The drug activity in that house might stop now, but it will never stop in Lewis County as long as they keep offering plea deals, drug court, or even complete dismissals “because they feel sorry for you…”
The drug activity will never stop.
Atleast the drug activity will stop. Glad no 1 was hurt.