Man dies in fire, explosion

By Chandler Watkins

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    CLARK COUNTY, Washington (KPTV) — The fire marshal has now taken over the investigation into a fatal fire on Friday afternoon in northwest Clark County.

Officials with Fire District 10 said they were first dispatched to a “large explosion” at 2:14 p.m. Friday in the 2600 block of Northeast Horton Drive.

“We were dispatched to a large structure fire,” Fire District 10 captain Galen Sarkinen said. “The notes on the call said that we had a possible burn victim. We had quite a few apparatus come. We also asked a couple other agencies to help us. When we did get there we did find the victim deceased before we were able to do anything for him. There were flames throughout the building. Our first arriving crews put those out pretty quickly, but because of the way the structure was built, it took about an hour to get it all the way put out.”

Sarkinen said it took crews only a few minutes to put the main fire out, but due to the internal structure, the overall fire took about an hour to put out. Fire District 10 ended up calling on other fire and rescue crews to assist.

“From our own district, we had three engines and three tenders and most of those were staffed with our volunteers who come from home or their jobs whenever they are able to,” Sarkinen said. “District 13 sent us an engine plus a captain in his own rig. Clark-Cowlitz Fire and Rescue sent us a battalion chief, 2 engines, a tender, and a tower which is a ladder truck.”

With many of the District 10 firefighters being volunteers, Sarkinen said they are thankful for their fellow first responders’ mutual aid.

“Some of those other departments came even though it’s not their district,” he said. “But when we request help some of them are automatically added to help. Anything that’s big like this, we really appreciate our mutual aid partners. We hope to repay them in kind in the future.”

Officials have not released the name of the victim or cause of death.

The fire district has not released a cause of the fire.

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