[1]A fire investigator begins looking into the cause of the fire at a Chehalis residence.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Six adults and two small children are without a home after a fire broke out this morning on Southwest 14th Street just east of Wilson Avenue in Chehalis.
Everyone was out of the two-story residence by the time Lewis County Fire District 6 Chief Tim Kinder arrived on the scene, but a man and a woman were taken to the hospital for breathing and/or smoke issues.
“When we pulled up, there was fire coming out the second story window,” Chehalis Fire Department Capt. Ted McCarty said.
Crews found flames on the upper floor and in the attic area, McCarty said.
“A lot of smoke damage throughout,” he said.
Genessa Glidden said she had just recently signed up with the owner Judy Chafin to be a caregiver there. Chafin was at the hospital and Glidden worked with authorities today to see about getting five cats out of the house.
The city red tagged the building as uninhabitable.
Members of the Red Cross and a Lewis County chaplain were at the scene assisting.
“We’re here to take care of them,” Malcolm Hanrahan of the Red Cross said. “They’ll have a place to stay tonight and something to eat.”
Kinder said 15 firefighters from four departments extinguished the fire. It was reported at 9:38 a.m. The cause is under investigation.
Chafin and the city had issues a few years back relating to zoning when she opened up her home to newly released prisoners and others who needed help getting back on their feet.
At the time, she called the home House of the Rising Son and she operated numerous halfway houses in the county.
In 2014, she was convicted for a prescription drug possession offense and given 30 days of house arrest for what a jury learned were a former housemate’s morphine pills left out in a common area which she scooped into her purse because she had her small grandchild living with her.
An anonymous complaint to the state Department of Labor and Industries around the same time took her to Lewis County Superior Court, with criminal prosecutors contending her performance of landlord-like services meant she wrongly collected disability benefits for a 2006 on-the-job injury. She was acquitted.
Chehalis Police Department Chief Glenn Schaffer today said an officer was called to the house recently and noticed a significant number of people residing there again.
Paperwork put together by the police department, the city’s community development section and the city attorney with notices of zoning and code violations are either ready to send or have already been mailed to Chafin, according to Schaffer.
“This zone should be for a single-family house,” the chief said.