PORT ANGELES – An exuberant puppy knocking over a candle started a fire Friday morning that left a family homeless just before Christmas.
No one was hurt in the 10:50 a.m. fire at 106 W. Seventh St., but Mari Tacardon, her mother and her 9-year-old son are out of their Port Angeles rental home, staying in a motel room paid for by the North Olympic Peninsula Red Cross through Christmas Eve.
“Isn’t it miserable? Just when it’s Christmas, no presents and no tree,” Tacardon said Friday afternoon as she bagged up possessions that were damaged by smoke and water and loaded the stuff she could keep into a van.
The charred mattress where the fire started was on the front lawn.
Tacardon said her son and a friend had made a tent in his bedroom, with the mattress inside.
The puppy – a blue heeler Shepherd mix named “Runty” – knocked the candle onto it.
By the time she reached the room with a fire extinguisher, the bedroom was full of smoke, Tacardon said.
“The Christmas tree was all gold and silver and crystal,” she said, motioning to the now-ruined tree.
The Christmas presents stored in the room next door were ruined.
Port Angeles firefighter Pete Sekac said the house suffered an undetermined amount of smoke, water and fire damage.
The fire itself was confined to one bedroom upstairs, he said.
Don Zanon, volunteer coordinator with the local branch of the Red Cross, said the family can’t return anytime soon.
“The house has to be gutted and everything removed,” he said.
Ownership of the house wasn’t clear this weekend.
