PORT ANGELES — A bed-ridden woman and her caretaker were taken to Olympic Medical Center after a fire was extinguished in a home on the 1000 block of East Spruce Street home early Saturday morning.
The fire started on the bed of a 71-year-old woman who was a paraplegic, according to Lt. Mark Karjalainen of the Port Angeles Fire Department, who issued a press release on the fire at 3:40 a.m. Saturday.
“She was adjusting the lamp with an incandescent bulb that was hot,” he said. The bulb touched her bedding and it caught fire.
“She was not badly burned,” Karjalainen said.
More severely burned was her caretaker, a 66-year-old man who threw the pillow and bedding on the floor and attempted to pat out the flames. He suffered burns to his hands and face.
Neither were identified because of privacy concerns and their conditions were not known later Saturday.
The house was left habitable, Karjalainen said.
Port Angeles police officers were first to arrive at the fire, as snow fell. “At great personal risk to their own safety,” they went into the smoke without protective equipment, put the woman into a wheeled office chair and helped slide her down in the front steps in the chair, Karjalainen said.
Firefighters with Engine 11 and Medic 11 found the house full of smoke and the caretaker still inside. They removed the fire material and the man, and then ventilated the structure, he said.
The man was transported by Port Angeles Fire Department paramedics due to the extent of his injuries, and the woman was taken to OMC by Olympic Ambulance for evaluation and treatment of minor injuries, Karjalainen said.
No smoke detectors were found or activated at the structure,he added.
