Oroville Police investigating suspicious apartment fire
Published 6:19 am Tuesday, December 19, 2017
OROVILLE – The Oroville Police Department are looking into the cause of a fire that has left the tenants of a fourplex homeless while the landlord makes repairs.
The fire, which occurred at the corner of Main and Golden Street, was called in to the Oroville Fire Department shortly after midnight, Friday, Dec. 15, according to Fire Chief Rod Noel.
“The fire started in a little storage shed outside one of the resident’s windows. After everyone got out, the tenants tried to put the fire out using one of the fire extinguishers from inside the apartment complex but that didn’t work,” said Noel.
The tenants called the fire in to county dispatch and Oroville Police Officer Chris Patterson responded to the scene.
“When the Police Department got to the apartment there was no fire inside. We knocked it down on the outside, but fire got in through a window air conditioning unit and started burning the magazines on an end table inside one of the apartments. That spread to the couch and was the cause of the smoke damage in all four units,” Noel said. “We were there until about 2 a.m. The original cause of the fire looked suspicious, but that’s up to the police to investigate.”
Oroville Police Chief Todd Hill confirmed his officers were investigating the fire as suspicious.
“Going by what one of the tenants told us about a person who did not live there we feel there is enough reason to look into the fire,” said Chief Hill.
About Gary DeVon
Gary DeVon is the managing editor of the Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune and celebrated his 25th year at the newspaper in August 2012. He graduated from Gonzaga University with a degree in Communications - Print Journalism, with an emphasis in photojournalism. He is a proud alumnus of Oroville High School. His family first settled in Okanogan County in the late 1800s. His parents are Judy DeVon and the late Larry DeVon and he has two younger brothers - Dante and Michael. Many family members still call Oroville home. He has a grown daughter, Segornae Douglas and a young granddaughter, Erin.
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