Family Displaced After Bridle Trails Fire

A family of four was displaced Sunday evening after a fire broke out in the crawl space of their Bridle Trails area home in Kirkland.

No one was injured in the fire that started at about 5:15 p.m., and quick action by the Kirkland Fire Department’s Engine 22 crew was credited with helping prevent the fire from spreading into the interior of the house, according to a post on the Kirkland Firefighters Facebook page.

A comment on the post by a member of the volunteer Kirkland Fire Corps said, “The responding crews did an excellent job keeping the fire at bay. It was a very difficult fire to fight (the house is built like a fortress) but they stopped it from destroying the house and equally important prevented any significant damage to the contents.”

Houghton Station 22 responded to the blaze with assistance from other Kirkland crews and those from Redmond and Bellevue.

“I would say Engine 22’s crew making some good decisions at the start helped prevent this from being a bigger fire,” said Acting Battalion Chief Ken Henderson, who was on the scene. 

Henderson said the four occupants of the house, an elderly couple and their two adult sons, were not able to stay there Sunday night. “We talked to them and they did have some place to go,” he said.

Firefighters approached the fire from two crawl space entries, but the crawl space was so shallow that holes had to be cut through the floor of the house.

The house is on the 5700 block of 125th Lane NE on Rose Hill, near Bridle Trails State Park. Three Redmond Fire Department and two Bellevue Fire Department units assisted Kirkland firefighters.