Quick action spares house from garage fire

Witnesses who quickly called 911 on Tuesday afternoon helped firefighters save a home that was only five or six feet from a blaze in a detached garage in the Walnut Grove area.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, firefighters were dispatched to 7700 N.E. 63rd St., less than a mile east of the headquarters fire station at 63rd Street and Andresen Road, said Firefighter-spokesman Jim Flaherty with the Vancouver Fire Department.

The first crews arrived to find no one home and the rear of the two-car garage in flames. Seeing it was so close to the house, firefighters set up a hose line to drench the area between the garage and the house.

Meanwhile, other firefighters sawed holes in the garage doors and used a powerful fan to force heat and smoke toward the rear of the garage, where it vented through a broken garage window where the fire was centered.

Firefighters doused the flames at the rear of the garage exterior, before it spread to a large amount of lumber inside the garage.

They saved the house and also prevented flames from spreading to a large fir tree near the garage — and to several other large trees surrounding the property.

“About another five minutes and we would have had an entirely different outcome,” Flaherty said.

Nineteen Vancouver firefighters and a battalion chief with Fire District 6 worked the blaze.

Traffic on 63rd Street was blocked in both directions for an hour as firefighters quelled the flames.

In the end, damage to the garage was held to about $25,000. The fire’s cause hadn’t been determined Tuesday night.

Clark County property records indicate the house is owned by Pavel Y. Nasteka.

John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com.