Fire In North Spokane Destroys Historic Building

Fire destroys decades of history this morning.

For years, The Shed restaurant has been a fixture on the corner of Division and Nora.  Now, it's a pile of burned out rubble.  Arson investigators have completed their preliminary investigation, but they have not released their findings.  The fire first began around 5 am Friday morning.  Since that time, the owner has decided to knock the building down.  Firefighters could see smoke and flames long before they arrived.  By then, the fire was well involved.  Even with a second crew on the scene, firefighters had their hands full.  "We had guys up on the roof that were cutting holes in the roof. They started getting smoke, heavy smoke and flames out of that, so we had to bail everybody out and go to a defensive operation."  Before long a third alarm was sounded bringing in more crews and more resources.  "And then we had to go to a point of putting water on the fire from the exterior trying to get the fire knocked down."
The intense flames coupled with blowing embers and dry conditions sent crews scrambling to  the roofs of nearby businesses.  Next door, Ichabod's North was spared by the fire, but a church  more then a block away was not as lucky.  "We did have a down wind fire at the Central Baptist Church.  We had a perfect target over there with that church that had a wood shingle roof...as dry as it's been, it doesn't take much of a spark or heat to get something like that going."  After two hours and enormous amounts of water, it appeared that crews had this fire knocked down.  But then a second blast of flames shot from the roof and front windows.  It wasn't until the fires came through the roof of the building that firefighters could get this one under control.  "It just takes time until the roof burns away until we can get water to the seed of the fire.
The building has been empty for about three months.  The owner of The Shed didn't want to go on camera, but says he's owned the building for about eight years.  We do know that it was insured for about 2-million dollars.