Fire guts empty house just south of Kellogg

Amanda Ralston stood on the sidewalk and watched a piece of her childhood go up in flames on Wednesday night.

The yellow, three-bedroom house in the middle of the 600 block of South Laura has been vacant for seven years, she said. It caught fire Wednesday night for the second time in the past week or so.

Flames billowed from the roof, sending smoke soaring so high it was readily visible from downtown and caught the attention of motorists streaming past on Kellogg just a couple of blocks to the north.

“I got a text message saying, ‘Hey, are you OK? What’s going on? We were driving across Kellogg and saw the smoke in your neighborhood,’ ” said Jennifer Dominick, who sat on her front porch and watched firefighters pour water from a boom onto the collapsed roof of the house two doors to the south.

When she was a child, Ralston said, there was a sweet lady who lived there who gave candy to the local children. But she hadn’t lived there for some time and died recently.

“I grew up in this neighborhood,” Ralston said. “I’ve been in every one of these houses.”

Firefighters quickly went on the defense in battling the fire, focusing on preventing the flames from spreading to surrounding houses.

Online real estate records indicate the 1,110-square-foot house southeast of Kellogg and Washington was built in 1900.

A cause and damage estimate have not been released.

This story was originally published October 12, 2016 at 7:49 PM with the headline "Fire guts empty house just south of Kellogg."