Defending Your Space: As Fires Spark, Neighbors in Rochester, Centralia Break Out Hoses

Heather Bodin might have come home from a day in Olympia Thursday afternoon to find her Centralia home had burned to the ground if not for the quick thinking of a neighbor, she told The Chronicle the next day. 

“I dropped to the ground as soon as I got there,” she said. “My neighbor saved my house and all the animals. We could have lost everything we had yesterday.”

As temperatures topped 95 degrees in Centralia Friday afternoon, the state Department of Natural Resources warned residents that the most dangerous wildfire-weather of the summer had arrived.

The warning came in a 24-hour period when brush fires came within feet of damaging homes in both Centralia and Rochester. In both cases, residents with garden hoses assisted in keeping the flames at bay before firefighters could arrive. 

“The dry fuel, record temperatures, high winds and lightning rolling in from the south present explosive potential for wildfire throughout the state,” Commissioner of Public Lands Peter Goldmark said in a press release. “This is a critical fire-weather pattern, notorious for producing large fires with extreme fire behavior. We need everyone to take the utmost care not to spark any fires.”

As of Friday, the DNR had seen 655 wildfires on its lands this year, 200 more than at the same time in 2014.

In the past two days a number of brush fires threatened homes in Lewis and Thurston counties. 

Lewis County fire chiefs urged residents to take measures to protect their homes, including creating defensible space around a home. 

That means keeping plants and grass moist and green, and moving combustible materials away from the outer walls of your home. 

“Cut all dry light fuels to 6 inches or less,” Assistant Chief Rick Mack, of the Riverside Fire Authority, said. “The key is if … you can keep the flame length low, you can reduce the pre-heating of flames in advance of the fire.”

The precaution could help slow a fire’s growth, he said. 

Chief Dave Germain, of Toledo’s Lewis County Fire District 2, said residents should also clear dry leaves out of gutters. Even with defensible space around a home, embers can travel on wind and land on roofs, igniting dry material in gutters, he said. 

“Are we out of the woods yet? No,” he said. “All you have to do is look at your own lawn to know it’s still dry out there.”

Bodin’s home, in the 900 block of F Street, caught fire at about 3:14 p.m. Thursday. She said her neighbor used a garden hose to keep the fire from spreading from the front porch, where it started, into the house. 

“I can’t thank her enough,” Bodin said about her neighbor, Ashley Reyes. “We were fortunate we only ended up with a few hundred dollars in damage. It would have just been absolutely devastating.”

Reyes said she got out her garden hose when she realized Bodin’s house was burning. 

“I was thinking it was my house. Then I walked outside and saw smoke,” she said.

Firefighters have not determined the cause of a brush fire that started about 15 minutes later, at 3:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon in very dry vegetation in the area of the 1000 block of Rainier Avenue in Centralia. 

A north wind pushed the fire, which started adjacent to train tracks, to a size of about 300 feet by 50 feet, Mack said.

The fire caused some damage to a fence and power poles. Crews extinguished it in about 10 minutes.

Mack said the official cause of the fire is undetermined, but speculated that a cigarette easily could have sparked the blaze.

“It’s possible somebody using the railroad to travel between First Street and Main Street just thought they put the cigarette out but didn’t,” he said. “Things are so dry, that’s all it takes.” 

A brush fire burned between 1 and 2 acres of dry grass in a residential neighborhood off Bonnie Lane in Rochester Friday afternoon, firefighters on the scene said. The fire threatened about five homes and outbuildings. 

The fire started at about noon, according to the West Thurston Fire Authority. Firefighters had the blaze under control about a half-hour later. 

The brush fire started in one home’s backyard, damaging a swingset and trampoline. The fire scorched the home’s foundation in several places, but the home was not seriously damaged.

The cause of the fire is believed to be a faulty extension cord running to a nearby mobile home, according to the West Thurston Fire Authority. No homes or outbuildings were seriously damaged. A fence and some garden equipment were scorched.

“When I got here, it was all around that house,” said Capt. Brian Christenson, of West Thurston. Christenson was off duty, but lives close to the fire and helped some residents use garden hoses to protect their properties. 

Christenson and other West Thurston personnel said the fire was propelled by wind, and could have damaged the five homes in the immediate area if it had spread any farther. 

Agencies responding to the fire included the West Thurston Fire Authority, the Riverside Fire Authority, the Department of Natural Resources, and Oakville and Tenino fire departments.

In addition to being in one of the longest and hottest heat waves in recent memory, Lewis County is also in the midst of a drought, along with the rest of the state. 

Although residents are avoiding watering lawns to conserve drinking water, firefighters usually advise residents to keep lawns green to reduce fire risk.

“Even before Independence Day, we were in for a pretty long hot summer, that was by all indications the forecast,” Mack said. “When you look at the conditions out there, it looks like we are already beyond a normal August.”

Rain and cool temperatures last weekend were not enough to dampen fire danger, firefighters said. 

“Limiting or even completely stopping the use of even recreational fires for a time would certainly lessen opportunities for fires to start,” Mack said. 

Mack also cautioned residents to put out all cigarettes in noncombustible ashtrays, rather than potted plants. He said fertilizer and soil can sometimes let cigarette embers smolder until they can reignite.