SPOKANE, Wash. – The Spokane Fire Department hopes lessons can be learned by the community on how to keep yourself and loved ones safe following Spokane’s deadliest fire in 29 years that killed a family of four on April 20.
According to the fire department’s data, the last fire that led to four deaths in Spokane was in 1995 when four brothers, ranging from two to eight years old, were killed when an unattended candle started a fire at 1327 North Adams Street.29 years later, the community is mourning the loss of four more people just across the street from North Central High School on Howard Street.
Spokane Fire Investigator John Goodman is sounding the alarm, calling the house fire that killed 33-year-old Arielle Desislets, her husband, 40-year-old Robert “Chip” Desislets, and their two children, 7-year-old Christopher and 2-year-old Aiden, a “perfect storm.”
“I’ll tell you the truth, I would dare say, in this city right now, those conditions probably exist in other homes,” Goodman said.
Deadly fires can happen, but sometimes they can be prevented. Walking through what is left of the family’s property on May 1, Goodman explained three factors that came together that led to their tragic deaths.
For starters, an electrical cord running into the home from the garage area was very old. Goodman said it was installed possibly as far back as 1968. Over time, the cord heated up and eventually gave out, leading to the flames on April 20. Goodman said old cords in older homes are simply unable to withstand the accommodations of modern families, like microwaves, TVs, AC units, etc.
“I think if there’s a message to be got in that world, it would be people need to take a good look around their house if they weren’t the original builders or original owners of the house and take a good look at the suspect wiring that could be there,” Goodman said.
Secondly, there was no door to the bedroom the family was sleeping in upstairs, which allowed smoke to get in very fast, leading to their death from carbon monoxide. The Spokane Fire Department (SFD) has continued to issue out alerts to the community when house fires occur, make sure to sleep with your door closed – it helps to block out the smoke and toxins when a fire does burn, buying victims a lot of time.
“Had they been alerted, they could have come out right out the window and hopped on this roof and hopped right off the edge, this is the lack of their knowledge that the horrible smoke was in there,” Goodman said.
And finally, maybe the most crucial factor is that the family had no working smoke alarms in their home; sound asleep, they had no idea the fire was burning.
When asked, Goodman said that, in his opinion, smoke alarms would have saved their lives.
“Can I say 100 percent? I feel like yes,” he said. “Having a smoke alarm ensures if something catches on fire in your home, you’re going to be alerted of it, you’re going to know it. We want them in the bedrooms you sleep in and in the hallway outside the bedrooms, that’s important.”
Leaving the deceased family’s property, looking at a charred home, the message is clear from SFD; do what you can to protect your home before it’s too late.
“If everything I can do is going to help my survivability in an emergency like a house fire, then what’s your life worth, what’s your kids live worth? This is something I think people get complacent about because a fire doesn’t happen in every place in every house all the time, it doesn’t mean it can’t,” Goodman said.
When you move into a home, SFD recommends hiring a licensed electrician to check out the property, they would find something suspicious like the Desislets’ troublesome electrical cord. Also, always sleep with your bedroom door closed. And most importantly, ensure your home has working smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms.
If you need smoke alarms but cannot afford them, SFD wants the community to know they will install them for free. If you need those services, contact Jamie McIntyre with SFD and visit this page for details.
