August 4, 2009

Fire strikes TD and Dallesport

By Elroy King
and Rodger Nichols
The Chronicle

     THE DALLES
     Two houses were extensively damaged Monday in an early morning fire at the intersection of East 13th and Thompson, but all of the occupants of the two houses got out safely.
     The fire started in a house at 2410 E. 13th St. owned by the Dexter Welch family. It then spread to a rental occupied by Chuck Parsons and two other people at 1408 Thompson St.
     No cause of the fire has been determined, but Mid-Columbia Fire & Rescue Chief Bob Palmer said it appears it started in the patio area in the back of the Welch house and then spread to the Parsons house. Investigation into the cause is continuing.
     City police reports said an officer was on patrol in that area of town and heard fire engines being dispatched. His report said the Welch house was fully involved when he arrived and one side of the Parsons house was also on fire. He determined that all of the occupants of both houses had gotten out safely.
     Two or three other homes in the neighborhood were threatened by the fire. One man was using a garden house to protect his house and an officer finally was able to rouse someone inside of another house and warn her of the danger.
     The fire did not spread to any other houses.
     The police got several reports from people in the area of having heard an explosion about the time of the fire, which was reported around 4:30 a.m. A burned propane tank was found in the deck area of the Welch home. Palmer said some people living in the area described the noise as a “bang” and some as a “pop” He said that could have been the propane tank exploding or could have been the glass door from the patio into the house blowing out.
     Palmer said that he has been told that the insurance companies consider both houses total losses. He did not have monetary amounts of the losses.
     The Welch house was relatively new and was equipped with smoke detectors and an interior sprinkler system.
     City police took a report for first-degree arson but nothing in the report said the fire had been deliberately started.

DALLESPORT
     “We were up at 4:30 Monday morning dealing with the two structure fires in The Dalles, then we got toned out again Monday afternoon,” said Dallesport Fire Chief Rhet Howard. His department and a number of others responded to a fast-moving grass fire that started near Highway 197 about 3:30 Monday afternoon. High winds fanned the blaze, which burned an estimated 250-300 acres before it was contained late Monday.
     Two wooden structures north of the Wish-Ham Native American cemetery along Highway 197 did burn completely. Howard said he did not know the exact nature of those structures.
     “We had structures threatened at Pellissier Trucking,” he said. “We were able to save all the structures there. No injuries, and we lost no homes.”
     Crews were on the scene again early Tuesday, after just six hours’ sleep to mop up and watch for hot spots.
     “We’re GPS-ing as we check for hot spots and walk the perimeter,” Howard said by phone Tuesday morning. When that’s complete, he said, the department will have an accurate measure of the fire size.
      “Scenic or Department of Natural Resources, I’m not sure which, called in a helicopter, and Eieslands provided a frontloader, which, between those two, got this thing stopped.”
     Howard passed on his thanks to firefighters from White Salmon and Bingen, Appleton, Lyle, High Prairie, Wahkiacus, Wishram, DNR, Scenic, “and probably one or two others I can’t think of right now” for their quick response.