A 4-year-old boy who found a lighter then wandered off when his mom wasn’t watching started the fire that gutted a 7-Eleven in the uptown Vancouver area June 14, according to investigators.
Vancouver Fire Marshal Heidi Scarpelli said the boy’s mother was talking to the store clerk when the boy found a long-neck lighter in the store, walked off and then lit some items in the store aisles on fire.
No one was hurt, but the fire shut down traffic around the store, 102 W. Fourth Plain Blvd., that evening and did about $310,000 in damage.
No formal charges have been recommended for anyone, Scarpelli said, but the Vancouver Fire Department and the county’s juvenile justice system are working together in helping the boy and his family through the department’s youth fire setter intervention program.