Fire causes estimated $100k in damage to West Valley City home

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah, Sept. 8, 2020  — Firefighters responded to a structure fire Tuesday morning at 6100 W. 3725 South, in West Valley City.

Nick Dodge, Battalion Chief with West Valley City Fire Department, said the call reporting a house fire came in at 7:01 a.m., one minute after fire crews’ shift change.

When crews arrived, they found the back side of the split-entry, single-family residence fully involved, Dodge said.

“If you can picture a deck off the slider, they had built some type of storage shed or some sort of storage area underneath that,” he said. “The cause of the fire is still under investigation.”

An older woman and her special-needs daughter were displaced, and damage was estimated at about $100,000, Dodge told Gephardt Daily.

The woman and her daughter were able to get themselves out of the building prior to the arrival of firefighters. Dodge said the family will probably be displaced for at least a few days.

The second-floor kitchen on the back side of the structure was gutted, but Dodge said, “We got lucky. The crews made a good stop on it on the backside…and in the kitchen. The rest of the majority of the damage was smoke damage in the rest of the home.”

Had the winds been pushing any more than they were, the fire could have been pushed farther into the home, he said.

“So sometimes it can help, and sometimes it can hurt. But at that particular time of day, the way the winds were blowing, we got lucky.”

Gephardt Daily will update this story if more information is released.