Kitchen Fire Takes Dayton Home

DAYTON - In the early hours of the morning last Thursday, Tia Gore was making her five-year-old daughter a birthday cake.

Together with her eightyear old son, Gore and her daughter were planning to mark the occasion of her birth later that day. It was an easy day for the family to remember because it came shortly after they moved into their rental home at 1013 South Third just before the girl was born.

As she was working on the cake, Gore suddenly heard a loud pop in the kitchen and the wall burst into flames.

"My first thought was 'my kids,' " said Gore, who used to be employed at the Dayton General Hospital, right across the street. "I took them straight to the hospital parking lot."

Within moments, the attic of the two-bedroom home was on fire and the firefighters called in from Dayton and Waitsburg had a tough time tracking, trapping and dousing the flames, which kept leaping from space to space under the roof.

"There were at least three concealed spaces under the roof," Columbia County Fire District 3 Captain Jeremy Phinney said about the older home that had been remodeled several times. "The fire traveled around under there."

Local fire officials are still investigating the cause of the fire, which promoted District 3 to call for mutual aid from the Waitsburgbased two-county Joint Fire District 2. They said the fire caused extensive fire, smoke and water damage that rendered it uninhabitable.

"It has displaced the residents," Phinney said.

Two dozen firefighters and three engines were on hand to help contain the flames, which started around 2:30 a.m. and was finally under control just before the start of the business day, he said.

Firefighters removed several roof layers to spray the building materials underneath and make sure the fire was finally out.

Deb Hays, who lives next door to Gore and whose parents, Carole and Bob Laski, own the rental, said Gore was not insured against the loss of personal property. Hays estimates Gore lost as much as 80 percent of her household goods to smoke or water damage.

Gore is getting some help from the American Red Cross, but is in desperate need of a rental and other support.

While Gore's children are staying with her mother, she's at a local motel looking for a new home. Friends have started an account at America West Bank in Dayton for community members who want to donate, Hays said.