Investigator: Motel fire was human-caused

The Sunday fire that gutted the Garden Motel was man-made, according to local fire officials.

“We finished our scene investigation,” Coeur d’Alene Fire Inspector Bobby Gonder said Wednesday. “There was a lot of destruction. We inspected every area of the old building. We ran the dog yesterday; we had some alerts, so we had some stuff tested.”

Gonder cited the lack of electricity or gas running to the vacant building as a key indicator to the findings.

“As to whether it was intentionally set, or if it was by accident, that’s still undetermined but it is human-caused,” he said. “We checked with [National Oceanographic Atmosphereic Administration] weather. There was no lightning strike in the vicinity at the time.”

While Gonder said Coeur d’Alene Fire could not yet determine the exact location of the fire’s origin, they think someone started the fire between the center and rear of the building. Gonder urged any members of the public who passed by the Garden Motel at the time of the Sunday morning fire during the early moments of the blaze to reach out to the department at 208-769-2340 — especially if they have photos or video that could yield clues.

Firefighters responded to the fire after receiving the call at 8:26 a.m., suggesting the fire could have started closer to 8 a.m. Roughly 30 firefighters tackled the blaze for nearly six hours. No bystanders or fire department personnel were injured.

The Garden Motel, owned by Ron Ayers, closed in 2016 and has remained vacant since, though Ayers said the area has attracted homeless people and vandals. Ayers has stated his aspirations to lure a Fairfield Marriott hotel to the property.

Investigators are also searching for information about the building’s early construction to learn more about its birth, hoping that could pinpoint more information about its death. One clue they found in the rubble, Gonder said, was a postcard dated 1953. It was an advertisement for the motel.

“Right now we’re basing everything we know about it from 1953,” he said.

Dorothy Dahlgren researched the building in the Museum of North Idaho’s archives. The director of the museum said Gonder’s timeframe was likely not far off.

“[The Garden Motel] was built in the early 1950s,” she said. “It is not in the 1949 city directory, and the next we have is 1952, and it was there, owned by Louis and Virginia Shramek.”

The investigation is ongoing.