A fire tore through a home north of Vancouver Monday afternoon, killing a family’s dog.
The fire, at 11906 N.E. 40th Ave. in the Barberton area, was reported around 5:30 p.m. Responding firefighters saw a column of smoke as they approached the neighborhood, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian.
Clark County Fire District 6 spokesman David Schmitke said the firefighters arrived to find the two-story house in flames.
“It was really going when we got here,” he said.
Joseph Caver said he was inside, in the living room, watching television when he started to smell smoke.
“I thought it was the A/C, so I looked outside and I saw smoke,” he said. “So then I ran outside into the yard, looked over the fence and saw smoke, saw it wasn’t the A/C.”
He then ran around to the front of the house and saw fire coming from the garage’s windows.
Leann Caver, Joseph’s wife, was away when the fire started. She called the house their “dream home,” and said they moved in last November.
Her father was hospitalized after losing consciousness at the scene. Schmitke said it wasn’t clear whether the man’s medical issue was directly related to the fire.
Schmitke said the family’s dog — a Dobermann named Perseus, Leann Caver said — was found upstairs.
The fire gutted the home’s garage, destroyed a vehicle parked inside and damaged another vehicle parked in the driveway. Firefighters cut a hole in the building’s roof, but Schmitke said it wasn’t clear how much fire burned inside the home’s living areas.
The Clark County Fire Marshal’s Office was investigating what happened, but Schmitke said it appeared initially that the fire started in the garage. The fire was brought under control in about 40 minutes.
He expected there’d be firefighters at the scene well into the night. Schmitke said the home was uninhabitable for now. The Red Cross said it responded to help three adults and two children.
