Two children die in Spokane Valley fire
Firefighters told of deaths as soon as they arrived at the site, agency says
Spokane Valley firefighters were called to a single-story home at 9815 E. Dalton Avenue about 2:45 a.m. Monday and were told at the scene that two people still were inside, said Patrick Erickson, Spokane Valley Fire Department spokesperson.
The children were unresponsive when they were located and life-saving measures were attempted for 45 minutes, Erickson said. The children’s father and a firefighter were injured and taken by ambulance to a hospital.
The father, Eugene “Gene” Ford, was treated and released and was back on scene later in the morning in scrubs and a sweatshirt with soot covering his skin. The firefighter has also been treated and released.
Margie Ford, grandmother of the two children was also on scene. She identified them as Maverick, 7, and Gabriel, 9 — “just babies,” she said. Two dogs also died, she told The Spokesman-Review.
Margie Ford said the father told the two children to get out of the home when one of them woke up and yelled “fire!” Her son tried to put it out, she said, but couldn’t. The Spokane Valley Fire Department said in a news release that when first-responders arrived, they found “one person attempting to fight the fire with a garden hose.”
Neighbor Cindy Sinatra said Gene Ford ran to her home, banging on her door. She called 911 because she thought someone was going to break into her home.
“I saw out the window there were flames,” Sinatra said. “He was running around the house going, ‘my kids are inside, my kids are inside!’ As soon as he said that, I heard a pop, pop, pop, pop, and the whole thing just exploded.”
Sinatra said he ran around the home frantically and tried to break into the bedroom of the two children through a window to get them out.
“He couldn’t break them,” Sinatra said. “By this time the whole house was in flames.”
Both children attended Linwood Elementary school, and a crisis counseling team is at the school to support students and staff, said Spokane Public Schools Spokesperson Ryan Lancaster.
The cause of the fire is currently under investigation, Erickson said.
