Ten hangar bays and several recreational planes were destroyed when a two-alarm fire ripped through a building at Grove Field Airport in Camas on Monday night.
Firefighters from East County Fire & Rescue, whose station was a couple hundred of feet from the flames, were the first to respond to the airfield, at 632 N.E. 267th Ave. They were there within minutes of the 911 call that came in at 10:22 p.m.
Arriving crews reported that explosions blew out hangar doors and knocked off the roof of the airport’s C Row, and that the flames reached 40 to 50 feet high, East County Fire & Rescue Chief Scott Koehler said.
The 10,000-square-foot hangar is made of wood and sheet metal. There are fire walls on each end of the hangar, but only simple partitions separating the hangar bays within the building.
That, along with the fact that airplane fuel burns quickly, led to the fast-moving fire, Koehler said.
After about 20 minutes of suppression efforts, crews called a second alarm, asking for additional resources from the Vancouver and Camas-Washougal fire departments. Firefighters kept the blaze from spreading to adjacent buildings and knocked the fire down by about 11 p.m. No one was injured.
The damage to the building and several Cessna-style recreational aircraft is estimated to be in the millions of dollars, said David Ripp, executive director of the Port of Camas-Washougal. The port owns the Grove Field Airport.
An estimated eight planes were destroyed by the fire, Ripp said. He added that it was difficult to get a precise number on Tuesday because many of the planes had melted down to nearly nothing.
Dennis Mock, who lives nearby, said he smelled smoke Monday night but didn’t think much of it at first. However, when his dogs started barking, he looked outside to see the small glow of the fire at the airport.
He scrambled to get to his neighbor, who had keys to a few of the hangars. Within minutes the fire was already fully involved, Mock said.
Mock said he and his neighbor began opening hangar bay doors and moved three airplanes, a Corvette and some other pieces of property farther away from the fire. Flames didn’t end up spreading to the hangars they emptied.
“We weren’t really thinking, we were just trying to get stuff out,” he said. “I don’t own a plane … but this is their passion. This is really unfortunate.”
Plane owners visited the ashes Tuesday morning, many arriving to find their planes reduced to an engine block. Some hangars housed antique cars, and the light of day showed their ashen frames hidden beneath parts of the burned hangar.
Sherrie Goodlett was going to go to the gym early Tuesday but heard the news and drove straight to the airfield instead.
Her Cardinal 172 plane was just one hangar over from the scene of the fire.
“It’s a little too close for comfort, I’ll tell you,” she said. “I need to go buy a lottery ticket.”
Frank Spencer of Camas wasn’t so lucky. He kept his Cherokee 180 plane in one of the now-destroyed hangar bays.
While he heard about the fire Monday night, Spencer waited until daylight Tuesday to inspect the damage.
Spencer said that arriving, he “saw a heartbreak. I saw my retirement fun and games gone,” he said. “God, there’s nothing there. … I could carry it with my hand.”
Spencer has owned his plane for about 12 years and said he would fly it when he could but “not nearly enough.” With the sunny weather reaching 80 degrees Monday, Spencer took a flight to The Dalles, Ore., to enjoy the clear skies.
“I haven’t had a better day in years,” he said. “I’ll probably never fly again.”
Even though his plane was insured, he said it would be too much work to start the hobby over again.
Chris Lehner, whose plane was parked at Grove Field but spared from the fire, said he heard the explosions Monday night and came to the airfield to see the commotion.
“I’ve been around aviation all my life and I’ve never seen a hangar go up like that,” he said.
While the decades-old hangar that caught fire Monday undergoes fire-code inspections twice a year, Ripp said, it was not outfitted with sprinklers. Fuel storage is not allowed in the hangars, he said.
“These are some of the older hangars,” Ripp said. “The newer ones are all steel so it probably would have gone a little differently.”
The airport was closed Tuesday while investigators with the Clark County Fire Marshal’s Office were on scene looking into the cause of the blaze. Starting today, the airport will be open daily under limited hours, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., until further notice, according to a news release from the port.
“We’re working with insurance adjusters for the tenants and the port,” Ripp said. “Until the insurance investigation is finalized, the taxiway on the north side of B-Row hangars and the south side of C-Row hangars will be closed to traffic.”
Clark County Deputy Fire Marshal Susan Anderson said Tuesday that investigators are about halfway through interviewing the people who rented the now-destroyed hangar bays to gather a damage estimate. She said the fire does not appear suspicious.
“It’s being investigated as some kind of accident inside one of the leased hangars,” she said.
Determining the exact cause, however, will likely take an aviation forensics expert, Anderson said. “The fire damage was so severe, it’d probably take forensic analysis to prove that something was a cause.”
Columbian staff writers Craig Brown and Stevie Mathieu contributed to this story.
