‘Suspicious’ Fire Damages St. Charles Catholic School in Northwest Spokane

The Spokesman-Review ^ | 3/18/21 | Emma Epperley

[marshmallow]

A fire at St. Charles Catholic School in northwest Spokane overnight that led to extensive damage to the school building is now being investigated by a trio of law enforcement agencies.

The Rev. Esteban Soler was sound asleep after a long trip home from Argentina, where he was visiting family, when he awoke to the sound of someone banging on the door to the rectory.

It was a Spokane police officer alerting Soler that the building was on fire.

“He was deep in his sleep and the pounding on the door, which is the police officers, woke him up,” Bishop Thomas Daly of the Diocese of Spokane said when he came to see the damage.

The officer was parked in the school’s parking lot when he saw signs of the fire and called it in at about 1:30 a.m., said Deputy Chief Julie O’Berg with the Spokane Fire Department.

“He was able to knock on some doors and make the call into the fire department,” O’Berg said.

Soler was the only person in the residence and was able to get out unharmed, O’Berg said. No one else was injured.

Spokane Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer said “aggressive firefighting” stopped the fire from spreading into the school’s middle wing and the north wing, where the sanctuary is located.

[HighSierra5]

Probably the same devil that burned the San Gabriel mission.