Deputy Police Chief Jason Viada extinguished a fire atop a wood stove that was generating 1-foot flames, he said.
The house in the 100 block of East 12th Street suffered smoke damage but the flames did not reach a nearby wall during the fire Monday morning, Assistant Port Angeles Fire Chief Mike Sanders said.
The homeowner had grown tired of a smoke-detector beeping because its batteries were low and he removed the batteries instead of replacing them, Sanders said.
“The biggest lesson was, there weren’t functional smoke detectors in the house,” he said.
The homeowner had set firewood on top the stove to dry it out, Sanders said.