A blaze attributed to ‘spontaneous combustion’ in a laundry hamper damaged Chimayo Restaurant in Eastsound last Friday morning. Our House Mall tenant Richard Russell came to work early and found thick grey smoke filling the hallways of the complex on North Beach Road. Firefighters and Eastsound Engine 21 arrived on the scene 8 minutes later, and were informed of a fire on the floor of the restaurant.

Division Chief Mik Preysz and the firefighters under his command entered the restaurant and found a large burning hole in the floor of the main dining area. The temperature inside the building was so high that a ceiling fan near the epicenter of the blaze had melted. The smoldering flames were quickly extinguished.

“We were lucky and everything worked right for us,” said Preysz.

The restaurant owner was lucky too. Had there been an open window, or the seals on the doors and windows been less tight, the fire could have had a lot more air and been much worse. It could have quickly spread throughout the building.

By 10 a.m. the San Juan County Fire Marshal Robert Low had declared the fire accidental and turned it over to the insurance company.

“It is a pretty clear cut case of spontaneous combustion,” Low said. “A laundry basket of clean linens and kitchen cloths that were washed the night before ignited,” Low said. “It happens. I have seen it more than once.”

According to Preysz it was the restaurant’s normal routine to do the laundry off site, and return the clean but unfolded linens to the restaurant, where they were folded and put away in the morning. The basket of linens, still warm from the dryer, combined with oil residue and air pockets to ignite the fire. The flames spread to the wooden chair the basket was sitting on, and then burned through the floor.

Chimayo owner Karen Campbell, says the plan to be reopened in about a month. She says that what people can do most to help is to come in and eat a lot when they re-open.

“We have to completely refurbish the restaurant,” Campbell says. “The one thing that has made the unbearable, bearable, is that I am grateful that I have insurance to cover my employees wages. I can take care of them and it’s my pleasure to do tha.”

In addition to the smoke damage in the restaurant, the mall hallways suffered smoke damage and most of the tenants businesses remained closed on Friday but reopened Saturday.

The fire department responded to the fire call with a large number of vehicles, equipment and manpower, due to the building’s multiple tenants and its location in the center of Eastsound. Engines from Rosario, Obstruction Pass and Orcas, two water tankers, the rescue unit and 17 firefighters were dispatched to the fire according to fire department sources.