Roof burned off from interior of the fire building

Portland Fire Responds to second multi-alarm fire in an 8-hour period.

At just before 3:30 AM, Portland Fire & Rescue responded to a commercial fire on SW Barbur in the West Portland Park Neighborhood. The first arriving engine reported that there was heavy fire venting through the roof and that the engine was connecting to a close fire hydrant to begin fire suppression activities. The next arriving engine drove past the structure on fire and pulled into a parking lot, gave more information about the style of building to all responding crews and suggested a second alarm assignment be added due to the amount of heavy fire showing through the roof of the entire office building.

The first arriving chief took command and requested the recommended second alarm from the dispatch center and directed all crews to begin setting up for a defensive fire operation with large diameter hose lines and aerial master streams put in place to suppress the fire from the outside. With the large body of fire present in what was suspected to be an empty office structure, there is too much risk placing firefighters on the interior of the 2-story building that is 30’ wide and 100’ long.

The distance from the building to the next available fire hydrants had the engines using all their hydrant connecting hoses, or lay-in lines, with the need for additional hose from other engines to span the distance from many different directions. This had many thousands of feet of large diameter hose in use to supply the amount of water needed to successfully operate all aerial master streams in operation to extinguish the fire. With the position of the building at the top of a hill and the distance to the fire hydrants, there was a need to place fire engines at each active hydrant to push the water up the hill through the hoses and then at least 1 engine to be attached to the truck to provide the needed pressure to have successful water flow from the nozzle located at the end of the extended aerial ladder. 

The location of the fire was near the border of Portland with both Lake Oswego and Tigard so there was representation from both Lake Oswego Fire and Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue on scene helping the efforts to extinguish the fire. Each of these departments has a different style hose that connects to the fire hydrants. Along with the many 3” diameter hose lines in play from PF&R crews on scene, LOFD and TVFR crews connected 5” diameter hose to a hydrant quite a distance from the fire, nearly emptying lay in hose beds of 2 different engines, in the event an additional aerial master stream was to be put into service. After the connection to the hydrant was made and hose advanced up the hill to the fire building it was determined that there was not a need to fill the hose and supply an additional truck based on the change of conditions present. Once this hose line was put in place and ready to be used it was determined not needed and then picked up and reloaded into the proper engines. 

After 75 minutes of continuous water flow from above the fire was nearly completely extinguished. The roof of the building was nearly completely burned off allowing the water from above to extinguish all flames nearly completely in the building. Fire crews went interior with hand lines at this point to locate and extinguish any remaining fire inside the building.

Portland Fire is now under a fire watch strategy to continue to flow water as needed on the building to eliminate any fire growth while the investigators on scene begin to conduct their evaluation process to establish cause. No injuries reported. 

Portland Fire & Rescue would like to thank both Lake Oswego Fire and Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue for their efforts in helping us fight this fire. We would also like to acknowledge the work done by the dispatchers at BOEC along with officers from PPB that actively blocked traffic allowing our crews to work safely along SW Barbur Blvd. 

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