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West Main Street P.O. Box 399 Monroe, WA 98272 (360) 794-7116 comp@monroemonitor.com Current Issue Online . |
Vol. 119, No. 27, July 7, 2009 Winner of 24 Washington Newspaper Publishers Association awards for 2007-8! |
This week's stories:
Fire on Madison
FEMA, County may close Three Rivers Mobile Home Park
Chief pay flap a "communication failure" says chief
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| Four minutes later, fire fighters arrived to find a two story home engulfed entirely in flames. The two residents barely got out in time, with one requiring treatment for smoke inhalation. One of the adults who lived there, Cathy Talbert, 54, was asleep when the fire started. She woke with the flames literally in her face, and it burned the tip of her nose. She escaped through a second-story window, where a neighbor helped her get safely from the roof to the ground. She saved some of her roommate’s cats by throwing them out the window. But her pets, including two cats, 12 and 14, and a border collie, were lost in the fire. Her roommate, who lived in the basement of the rental home, also escaped unharmed. The cause of the fire may never be known, said Richelle Risdon, spokesperson for the Monroe Fire Department, because the house burned so completely that it’s hard to know where the fire started or what may have initially ignited it. Fireworks were found near the house, but Risdon cautioned about drawing conclusions based on that. “We don’t know how it started, we may never know. The home collapsed, making it hard to tell how it started,” she said. “We’re not blaming anything.” The speed of the blaze that destroyed the home was due, at least in part, to the type of construction it had, she noted. “Balloon frame construction contributed to the fire spread,” she said.
Balloon frame construction was popular for a century. Its use came to an end in the 1950s. It became popular because it is a very simple form of framing, easily accomplished by unskilled builders in the west. Balloon framing was done with the kind of long wooden wall stud unavailable today, in which studs began at the sill of the first floor and extended all the way to the top of the second floor. Unlike in today’s architecture, the individual floors weren’t constructed on platforms. Thus there are no fire breaks between floors. The open space between interior and exterior walls that run from the first floor to the attic of a balloon frame home make wonderful conduits for fire, said Merlin Halverson, chief of the Sultan Fire Department. “What happens is the fire travels unseen and unimpeded from one floor to the next,” he said. “You can put out a fire in the basement and think you’ve done your job, and the fire starts up again in the attic.” The Orr Street fire is an excellent example; a family heard fire in the walls, but never saw it. Firefighters eventually found it on the second floor and attic, which where heavily damaged. The fire turned out to be an electrical fire. “If you have a fire in a an electrical outlet and it has oxygen to it, the walls of a balloon frame house act just like a blowtorch,” said Halverson. “It drives that fire through to the attic.” That makes fires quite a bit harder to fight, he said. “The way we fight fires, we try to compartmentalize them so you get them in a room and keep them there and put them out,” he said. “In a balloon frame house, that’s hard to do.” Most people don’t know if they have balloon frame homes, and it’s hard to tell by looking. But if you have an older home that is more than one story, the next time you have a plumber or electrician over, ask him or her to take a look, suggested Halverson. “Electricians have a device they use for snaking wires through walls,” he said. “If you can run one of those from one floor to the next without hitting anything, you have a balloon frame house.” If you do have a house of that style, there may be little you can affordably do to retrofit it to make it safer. If you can afford them, fire sprinklers are the single best safety measure you can take, said Risdon. But if not, then make doubly sure all your rooms are outfitted with smoke detectors, know how to get out of the house in case of emergency, and be ready to tell firefighters when they arrive what kind of house you have, to help them plan how to put the fire out, she said. The home burned on Monday was destroyed completely, and the residents there have lost everything. People have been calling the fire department to find out how to help, Risdon said. Anyone who wants to learn more about how to help the two roommates who lost their home, pets, and all their belongings, can call Richelle Rison at the Monroe Fire Department, at (360) 794-6333, she said. Back to main page |
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