'It burned until it ran out of fuel'

Sometime overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, April 13 –14, a fire destroyed at least one vehicle and damaged several others - possibly beyond repair - in Medical Lake's maintenance shop.

Scott Duncan, the city's maintenance supervisor, said when he arrived at 8 a.m. Thursday morning, something didn't seem right in the office portion of the shop on State Route 902/Lefevre Street. There was a slight burning smell to the air, and other evidence raising questions.

"I noticed some fine dust on things and thought, 'what's this?'" Duncan said.

Duncan began to explore, working his way down the hallway to the shop portion of the building where two long bays held 4 – 5 city vehicles, including a dump truck, noticing that as he progressed, the burning smell got heavier. When he reached the shop door and opened it, the cause became evident as he beheld a facility blackened, but not charred, by fire.

City Administrator Doug Ross said sometime between when the shop closed at 4 p.m. Wednesday and when Duncan and crew arrived the next day, an intensely hot fire had started in one of the vehicles. The fire destroyed one vehicle, a 2001 Chevy Silverado 1500, and blackened parts of six others, including the dump truck, with soot as well as the metal walls and roof and other pieces of maintenance gear in the building.

"It burned until it ran out of fuel apparently because nobody reported it," Ross said. "For lack of a better term, it was like a giant enclosed pizza oven in there."

Duncan said some of the fire was still visible when he arrived.

"All that was left was some red embers by that tire," he said, pointing to the left rear wheel of the Ford pickup that had burned.

Medical Lake Fire Department Fire Chief Jason Mayfield said Duncan called him directly about the fire, noting he "still had a vehicle smoking." Assistant Fire Chief Corey Stevens and two Medical Lake fire crews responded, along with one crew from Spokane County Fire District 10.

Mayfield said there were still a few small pockets of active fire, which were quickly extinguished, but crews noticed an ammonia-type smell in the air and suspected the possibility of hazardous materials release in the area.

"It's a maintenance shop, a big garage," Mayfield said. "There are things in there that are not designed to be mixed together."

Fairchild Air Force Base's haz-mat unit was contacted, and recommended evacuation and shutting down of SR 902. Once base crews were onsite, they also contacted and received help from a haz-mat unit with the Spokane Fire Department.

As maintenance crews began to sift through the shop, Ross said they began uncovering more damage. Traffic barricades and regulatory signs, small equipment such as lawn trimmers, spare water meters and installation equipment and other items were damaged, some likely beyond repair.

And while the damage to the other trucks appeared superficial, Ross said once the hoods on the engine compartments were opened, things got worse. Duncan confirmed that hoses and other rubberized fittings had been melted, pointing to red pools of fluid underneath the vehicle axles and wheels as indicators that seals on the brake systems had melted along with brake pads.

What's also interesting to Ross are the items that one might expect to burn, but didn't. Near the destroyed pickup were plastic gas containers used to fill weeding and mowing equipment, along with two, barbecue-sized propane tanks.

"They were just fine," Ross said.

As of Friday morning, crews from ServPro were onsite doing clean up, with insurance investigators also arriving. Ross said it's too soon to know the exact dollar amount of the damage, nor what caused the fire in the first place.

"We got fairly lucky the damage wasn't considerably more," Mayfield said. "There was a significant amount of fire in that building."

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.