House burns in Belvedere

A house in Belvedere burned down Saturday in a relatively short time.

"It went up quick," said Morgan Tillman, a volunteer firefighter with Okanogan County Fire District 2 at Elmer City.

Tilman, who said she arrived on "the late crew" that stayed until it was over but was not there at the beginning, said she understood a person inside the house had been taken out, but she had no details.

District 2 Chief Dave Finch said he couldn't even be sure of that, and the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Both described a scene where access for fire engines was hampered by the narrow road that threads through the Krebs' property. Fire tenders full of water could only access the scene one at time, switching out every time water ran out.

Firefighters were mainly keeping the blaze from spreading into a wildfire and getting to neighboring properties, a priority determined after propane tanks were discovered in the basement early on.

Other people apparently live on the property in shacks, old campers and motorhomes.

Finch said agencies working on the fire included Colville Tribal EMS, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Electric City Volunteer Fire Department and Grand Coulee Volunteer Fire Department.

"I can say only good about them," he said in appreciation of their response to the fire at the northern edge of his district.

An old stone foundation is about all that's left of the Krebs house, where Paul Krebs once tended his garden and took pleasure in a pond in which he kept fish and that housed a small generator for a little hydro-electric power. He died in 2007.

Tillman said she remembered going there as a kid to fish in the pond just east of the house. She was disappointed to see it go up in flames.

"Everybody did their part, and it was as good as it could be," she said of the firefight.