A house fire Wednesday afternoon displaced a family of four, with one of the residents being an employee of Kent Fire Department/Fire District 37. The latter serves the Covington area.

When the fire was first reported around 1 p.m., a woman and her infant daughter were at the home located in the 10200 block of Southeast 270th Place, according fire department spokesman Kyle Ohashi. Both mother and child were able to get out of the home safely and went to a neighbor’s house. The other two residents weren’t home at the time of the fire.

More than half the house was engulfed in flames when firefighters from Kent and the Valley Regional Fire Authority arrived. Firefighters contained the fire in less than 30 minutes, but it took another hour to fully extinguish the flames, Ohashi said.

An investigation and a dollar loss estimate hadn’t been concluded Wednesday evening.

Red Cross is working with the family. In addition, because one of the victims is an employee of the Kent Fire Department, assistance from the Kent Firefighters Foundation will be available to the family. The Foundation is the non-profit arm of Kent Firefighters Union Local 1747.