Staff Report
The Spokesman Review
SPOKANE, Wash. — A South Hill fire displaced a couple and their three cats Thursday morning while a north Spokane blaze closed a stretch of North Monroe for more than an hour.
No one was hurt in the South Hill fire, but it “definitely had an impact on their Thanksgiving,” said Brian Schaeffer, the Spokane Fire Department’s assistant chief.
The blaze started on the second floor of a lower South Hill home about 10:45 a.m., Schaeffer said. Firefighters arrived to find heavy smoke coming from the home. The residents had already evacuated.
The damage was kept to the second floor, but the couple could not stay there.
Firefighters offered to take the couple to a fire station for a Thanksgiving meal, Schaeffer said, but they have friends and family in Spokane and went to be with them.
Just before 1 p.m., firefighters responded to North Monroe Street and closed the thoroughfare for about an hour and a half as they fought a building fire. Two people escaped the building at 2415 N. Monroe, one with minor burns sustained while trying to put the fire out with an extinguisher.
Firefighters contained the fire to a room on the building’s ground floor.
The cause of both fires is under investigation. Damage from the South Hill fire is estimated at $10,000.
Copyright 2011 Spokane Spokesman-Review