Fire Damages House on Layfield Road

East Ridge firefighters clear debris from a carport area of a Layfield Road home that was damaged by fire on Wednesday morning.

A fire Wednesday morning damaged a house on Layfield Road.

According to East Ridge Fire Department officials, the fire was called in from a person in the nearby Park Ridge Apartment complex at 6:22 a.m. When firefighters arrived they found a carport engulfed in flames that were spreading to the rear of the house.

Commander Bowen said firefighters conducted an aggressive attack of the blaze and quickly extinguished it. A search of the single-story home revealed that no one was inside. Officials said the house appeared to be unoccupied.

Fire Marshal Kenny Custer said the cause of the fire is under investigation.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.