Home destroyed by fire in Airway Heights neighborhood

Firefighters spent all of Friday night and Saturday morning responding to a fire that engulfed a home and threatened two others in a residential neighborhood in Airway Heights.

A male resident escaped the home with no injuries, but a firefighter was briefly hospitalized due to exhaustion, said Don Malone, assistant chief of the Airway Heights Fire Department. After an hour, the firefighter was “perfectly fine,” Malone said.

The fire was reported shortly before 10 p.m. near 12th Avenue and Aspen Place. Firefighters arrived to find the house engulfed in flames but prevented them from consuming two adjacent homes. One of those homes received only minor damage, Malone said.

“They did a great job of stopping the fire,” he said.

It was initially reported as a brush fire, so crews responded with a wildfire truck before some headed back to the nearby station to get an engine better suited for structure fires, he said.

Crews from Spokane, Medical Lake and Fairchild Air Force Base also responded to the scene.

Malone said firefighters finished monitoring for hot spots and left the scene shortly before noon Saturday.

The man who escaped the burning home was connected with Red Cross volunteers and has family in the area, Malone said.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.