Thanks to a very well-built building, a fire that ignited in a room at the Rainbow Inn was quickly put out and didn’t spread outside of the room.
Terrace city firefighters were called out to the blaze around 9:20 a.m. Jan. 10 and found smoke and flames coming out from the front of the room when they arrived.
The lone occupant of the room said he was cooking in the kitchen when the curtains caught fire, said firefighter Dean Prins, who was in charge at the scene.
He tried to extinguish the flames himself with a wet towel but when that didn’t work, he went out the back door since the front door was blocked, said Prins.
Firefighters put out the flames in about four minutes, said Prins.
The rooms next door in the same building weren’t touched by the fire at all, and neither was anything outside, he said.
Firefighters will check in the attic section of a building to determine if the flames spread but since this building was constructed like a bomb shelter and still had the original roof on it, they had to break into the gable of the roof and tunnel in to see what was going on, said Prins.
Later in the afternoon, firefighters will return with police to do an investigation, he said.
