Flames consume Pasco shop and home that also burned last year
A early afternoon blaze in Pasco ignited a home that had also caught fire last summer.
People spotted flames and thick black smoke coming from the 4,000-square-foot building on the 700 block of Road 56 shortly before 1 p.m. Wednesday and called 911.
The plume could be seen in Kennewick, according to dispatch reports.
Fire Chief Bob Gear was the first to arrive, and he found that flames already had engulfed the building, said Ben Shearer, the Pasco Fire Department public information officer. Firefighters worked quickly to keep the blaze from spreading.
But heat and smoke kept firefighters from getting into the building, as well as concerns that the structure may have been weakened by the previous blaze.
Most of the building is a shop, with a 1,000-foot apartment inside, according to the Franklin County Assessor’s Office.
“We watched the flames jump from one end of the building to the other end of the building because it was all open inside,” Shearer said on a video shared on the department’s Facebook page on Wednesday.
Firefighters were told that no one was inside.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 2:05 PM.