Large fire breaks out at Wolf Lodge Inn Restaurant in Coeur d'Alene

Now, of course, that is not the only breaking news that we are keeping track of at this hour, the historic Wolf Lodge steakhouse destroyed after a massive fire broke out. This afternoon, we've learned fire crews had to give up trying to save the beloved restaurant. One person is in the hospital, three firefighters also suffering tonight from heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation. A fire broke out just after today. Within a hour, those flames turned the nearly century old lodge to rubble and ash. Thanks for being here with us tonight. I'm C, I'm Cody Proctor in for Mark and Whitney tonight. Now, creme Two's Christian Garza is now live on the scene right now. He has been out there for several hours keeping track of the latest details. And Christian, you just got an update from fire officials. Yeah, I did get enough different fire officials. Now I did arrive several hours ago and I will describe what exactly I saw when I first got here. But let me show you what it's looking like as of right now. As you can see, the Wolf Lodge has completely been burned down to the ground and you can see all around the lodge as well. There is a bunch of charred ground from the fire that kind of spread that came up and spread out to the nearby wildlife area. Now, it is important to note that today the wolf was closed for customers. However, a worker here says that every labor day, the owner throws a barbecue for their staff and their families as well. The fire chief for Kay County fire and rescue Christopher Wade tells me that at this point, crews aren't sure what started the fire but that they will be here monitoring the scene for hours. Now, when the firefighters arrived on scene, they said they saw flames both in the chimney of the restaurant and in the attic. Now this fire has 11 different fire organizations responded to it as well as over nine different water tenders to get water from Lake Port Lane since there are no fire hydrants on site. Now, there was a small wildfire in the wooded areas, like I mentioned a little bit earlier around the steakhouse, but crews have contained it at this time. And the steakhouse itself though has been destroyed. Now, I had a chance to talk with Travis Anderson who has worked at the Wolf Lodge steakhouse for over 20 years. He says that the loss of this historic location is going to be felt by the community for a very long time. I'm devastated. Uh Tragic. Um Me personally, I, I think I'm still in shock when I first got there before they kind of put the block off. There was a lot of crying and, and tears and just, you know, disbelief that it was actually happening. And then, um, yeah, it was, uh, it was hard to watch something. I kind of wish I didn't really get to witness, to be honest with you as fire crews continue to work, they asked that people stay out of the area, especially because people have been nearly hit on I 90 trying to take pictures of the damage. But like I said earlier, fire crews will remain on site for the next couple hours to make sure that there aren't any flare ups here in the area, live in Quarter Lane, Christian Garza from T.

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