A fire Thursday nearly destroyed a home on Pleasant Valley Road.
Firefighters responded to 1023A Pleasant Valley Rd., near White’s Electronics, at 1:53 p.m.
The home is owned by Miguel Lopez and rented by J.C. Mowdy, who lives there with her children.
The value of the building was estimated at about $85,000. Damage estimate was about $70,000.
No one was in the home at the time of the fire. No one was injured.
Steve Howard of White’s Electronics Marketing Department was among the first to attack the fire.
Employees were on break and noticed smoke at the house, Howard said. They weren’t sure whether it was just a debris fire, but it kept getting bigger. That’s when they reported it to 911 and employees started getting out White’s Electronics hoses.
Four or five White’s employees hooked the hose up to a fire hydrant, Howard said. White’s has equipment in case it’s needed at the plant.
The employees mainly worked on keeping the fire off the grass and out of the woods around the house, Howard said. They couldn’t do much about the structure with the equipment they had.
They kept the fire in the house, Howard said. Outside the home were some singed trees.
Oregon Department of Forestry, Linn District, responded to the fire as well.
The house was just outside the city limits and surrounded by wildland, Jim Basting of Linn District said. The district sent a 1,000 gallon engine with a crew of three to keep the fire out of the wildlands while the Fire and Ambulance District handled the structure fire. ODF fought fire in some blackberries behind the house, but fire outside the home amounted to maybe “a 100th of an acre.”
ODF later brought three 200-gallon brush rigs onto the scene with one firefighter in each.
Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District responded with two engines and a tender.
The fire department report listed the cause of the fire as heat from a cigarette, but how the cigarette started the fire was unavailable at press time.