Critchley says he did not make a final check in last week’s house fire
By Terry Murry on Monday, May 15th, 2023 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
PENDLETON – Fire Chief Jim Critchley said firefighters were initially unable to make an entry into the supposedly vacant house that was on fire on South Main Street last Tuesday due to debris blocking the way to the second floor.
“The house was boarded up,” he said. “The house was virtually abandoned. We went in a little way and we encountered a lot of debris. We tried to push through past it, but the fire had been progressing for a while, so it was too dangerous to do it like a regular house fire.”
Since firefighters were unable to reach the second floor, they exited the building and took up a defensive position to keep the fire from spreading to other houses.
“We pulled everybody back and since it had been burning for a while, we ended up being defensive on it,” Critchley said.
He said crews put a lot of water on the fire and extinguished it, but due to the collapse of the roof they were never able to get deeper into the structure to determine the specific cause and point of origin.
“I was the one investigating it and looked into it,” he said. “I went in the front door and I was able to see where the major burns were.”
Critchley said it was his responsibility to perform a second search.
“I did not do that,” he said. “It was missed because I wasn’t able to get in to start sorting through the debris that was there.”
Critchley said that when police found the body Monday morning, he notified the Oregon State Fire Marshal and has asked for them to send investigators to look into the fire itself and the circumstances surrounding the body. He said they can determine if the person whose remains were found was dead before firefighters arrived on the scene.
“We’re going to have to wait to see that,” he said. “The fire had progressed significantly that the fire we saw was actually coming out of the second story. I can tell you that the fire started on the first floor. Because the fire had progressed, I do not believe that anybody could have survived at the point that we were able to make it in at 4:00 a.m.”
He said every day that someone is lost in a fire is a bad day, but it’s “even worse when it happens like this.”
