Couple Selling Dishman Hills Home And Moving To Joel

SPOKANE — Lightning usually doesn’t strike twice, unless you’re Nancy and Peter Steele, who were leaving their home in the Dishman Hills area to move to a condo in downtown Spokane at the Joel Building.

The Steeles bought one of the condos of the Lofts at Joel development on the third floor just above Churchill’s Steakhouse. Although the building suffered smoke and water damage firefighters say the condos look intact.

Which is good news, because Thursday morning Nancy Steele thought she was suffering from deja vu when she turned on the television to see her new condo.

“It couldn’t possibly be on fire,” Nancy Steele said. “Doesn’t seem real when you watch it on television.”

As she watched on television she saw smoke pouring from the windows and ladder trucks pumping water onto the roof of their building.

Thursday evening the couple stood outside of what was supposed to be their empty nester home, though with each step, they are a little more confident it might still be.

“Our drywall looks intact, our ceiling looks good,” Nancy said.

They haven’t moved in yet – Nancy says they were supposed to close on the condo on August 1st – and now the Steeles have narrowly missed two major fires in the Spokane area.

“We live at the edge of the Dishman Hills so we just got the smoke out of that house and had to tell the kids this one smelled a little worse,” she said.

The Steeles soon to be home was just what they were looking for and even after the smoke and flames it still is.

“We’ve seen everything else and this is what we want,” Peter Steele said.