PORT ANGELES — Deputy Police Chief Jason Viada extinguished a fire atop a wood stove that was generating 1-foot flames, he said.
The house in the 100 block of East 12th Street suffered smoke damage but the flames did not reach a nearby wall during the fire Monday morning, Assistant Port Angeles Fire Chief Mike Sanders said.
The homeowner had grown tired of a smoke-detector beeping because its batteries were low and he removed the batteries instead of replacing them, Sanders said.
“The biggest lesson was, there weren’t functional smoke detectors in the house,” he said.
The fire call was reported to 9-1-1 at 10:57 a.m. Monday.
The homeowner had set firewood on top the stove to dry it out, Sanders said.
Viada, leaving the cleaners about 14 blocks away with a fresh uniform, immediately responded to the alarm, retrieving an extinguisher from his police vehicle and putting out the fire before firefighters arrived.
“You can’t make that stuff up,” Viada said.
There was debris on top of the wood stove.
“I couldn’t tell what was burning, but it was burning hot,” Viada said.
“I’d knock the flames down with the fire extinguisher, and within a couple of seconds, it had reignited.”
