PORT ANGELES — Quint Chastain has grown up knowing fire safety.
As the son of a career firefighter, “he’s been around smoke detectors all his life,” said Chastain’s father, Dave Chastain, a Port Angeles firefighter/paramedic and volunteer chief of Clallam County Fire District No. 4 (Joyce).
So on Tuesday evening, when 18-year-old Quint Chastain heard a detector wailing from inside a house on Lincoln Street, he knocked on the doors.
After finding no one at home, he called 9-1-1.
His actions might have prevented a much larger disaster.
Firefighters arrived and saw an orange glow coming from the second floor of the house at 2411 S. Lincoln St. They were preparing to enter an upstairs window via a ladder when the homeowner arrived.
Candle burns down
Inside, they found a candle that had burned down and set a tablecloth and other items ablaze, according to Fire Department reports.
They put out the fire before it caused too much damage.
“It’s pretty clear that if (Chastain) hadn’t been there and hadn’t heard this, it could have been significantly worse,” Port Angeles Fire Marshal Ken Dubuc said Wednesday.
