Firefighters this morning at the fire in Salkum. / Courtesy photo by Bob Jackson of Onalaska
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
Four residents suffering from smoke inhalation and a responding firefighter who injured his leg were hospitalized after a fire broke out this morning in a Salkum home.
Some 25 firefighters from Salkum, Onalaska, Mossyrock and Lewis County Fire District 5 based in Napavine answered the 7:30 a.m. call to the residence in between U.S. Highway 12 and state Route 508.
“Don’t know what caused it, but it was a total loss, a double-wide trailer,” District 8 Assistant Chief Don Taylor said this afternoon.
Responders got the blaze under control about 11:30 a.m. and the scene was finally cleared about 2 p.m., he said.
A couple and two older teenage relatives who live there had a pair of out-of-town guests overnight, Taylor said.
He said one of the house guests was sleeping on the living room floor when she was awakened by what she thought was the sound of bacon cooking.
“She looked up and saw nobody was cooking and she could see flickering on the walls,” he said. “She opened a door – I don’t know if it was a back door or an inside door – and a ball of fire drove her back.”
Taylor said the older gentleman who lives there had severe smoke inhalation and a hand injury he thought he got trying to help the others out of the home.
A District 8 firefighter injured his leg when he fell through the floor during mop up, Taylor said.
The residence on 100 block of Maple Crest Drive is off a one-lane road with a narrower driveway so arriving fire trucks had to be stacked up along the road making fighting the fire more challenging, according to Taylor.
A car was destroyed by the fire, but a garage was spared, he said.
Taylor didn’t know all the details of how the occupants got out but said somebody had thrown a brick through a bedroom window and they were barefoot and in their night clothes at the back of the house when firefighters arrived.
“We had to bring them past the fire to get them to the ambulances,” he said. Two were carried and the others escorted, he said.
The fire department contacted the Red Cross to assist the fire victims with a place to stay.
The cause is under investigation.
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Read this morning’s news item on the fire here
Firefighters this morning at the fire in Salkum. / Courtesy photo by Bob Jackson of Onalaska
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
everybody recovered fine we will rebuild thanks to the fire department and everybody involvled