Fire this morning

Trevor Westlie photo, above

At 7:25 this morning, Ocean Shores resident Todd Parrish was getting his kids ready for school. “I heard an explosion that shook the house,” he said.
Thinking a car from Point Brown Avenue had hit his house, he looked out the window and saw a ball of fire erupting out of the house next door.
Ocean Shores firefighters responded to his 911 call and, according to Lt. Brian Ritter, confronted “a fully involved fire at 226 Ensign Ave. NW.” He said the adjacent house, Parrish’s, was endanger of catching fire, with flames shooting toward it.
Ritter said “the fire was under control within 25 minutes. No injuries.”

Michelle Plumb photo, below:

Ritter said the cause of the fire is under investigation. “It’s a total loss,” he said of the now-crumbled single-family home.

Parrish credited the firefighters with saving his house. After his 911 call, the OSFD responded “in 3, maybe 4 minutes, not that long.
“This tree was flaming,” he said, looking up at a big tree that reaches toward his neighbor’s house. “You can see the paint on my house blistered.”

Steve Hill photo, below:

Ritter said that while one unit attacked the fire, another soaked the Parrish house with water to keep it from catching.
“This happened at shift change,” added a bleary-eyed Ritter. He and two others from Shift B were just passing off instructions to three from Shift C when the call came in, so twice as many career firefighters were on duty as normal.
In addition to them, other professionals, various volunteers and members of Fire District 7 responded to the fire, a total of 20 personnel. Mike Styner, chief of the fire and police departments, was also on scene, as well as several police officers doing traffic control on Point Brown Avenue.

Jennifer Owen photo, below: