Street Kids Suspected In Blaze Homeless Teenagers Used Downtown Building For Shelter

Fire destroyed a vacant downtown Spokane building Friday, and investigators suspect the street kids who used it for shelter are to blame.

Dozens of firefighters battled the blaze at the brick building just west of the corner of Spokane Falls Boulevard and Division early Friday. By the time crews arrived shortly after 3 a.m., flames had consumed the former office building.

“It took us three hours to put the fire out,” said fire Capt. Ken Wiedmer. “We couldn’t get near it for awhile, it was so hot. We couldn’t go in it at all.”

The crews managed to prevent an adjoining building, the Bel Franklin, from sustaining anything more than a lot of smoke. Two dozen tenants who live in apartments above Fast Eddie’s Tavern were evacuated.

“I didn’t know if I’d have a place when I got back,” said Denny Browne, who grabbed a change of clothes before leaving his apartment in the hands of firefighters. “But it was fine. They saved us.”

Wiedmer said the building, vacant for at least three years, was boarded up by fire crews Thursday afternoon. The city had received reports that homeless teenagers were breaking into the building and using it as a sheltered party spot.

Investigators believe the youths set fire to the place as they tried to get back in, sometime about 3 a.m.

“There is no normal way that fire could have started,” Wiedmer said, noting electricity had been cut off for some time. “Someone did it, intentionally or by accident.”

Owner John Harvey said he’d last checked on his building about a month ago, and knew people had been inside.

“If someone wants in a place bad enough, they’ll get in,” the retired factory representative said. “They don’t have any regard for property. I couldn’t keep them out.”

One boy who stood near the still-smoldering building said he’d used it once for shelter with friends. The teenagers, mostly runaways, entered the building by its fire escapes, he said.

“Everybody liked (the building),” said the boy, who refused to give his name. “I don’t know why they’d torch it.”

Harvey said he’d just sold the building to a man who wanted to turn it into low-income apartments like the Bel Franklin next door.

For 20 years, it housed the John L. Harvey company, a heating and air conditioning distributor. Harvey also rented office space to two other businesses, including an engineering firm.

The building’s space upstairs was used as a driving range, Harvey said. He had a putting green there, too.

“A great one,” he added. Harvey retired in 1990, and the building emptied out two years later.

Harvey stood across the street from the skeleton of the building and watched piles of bricks tumble to the sidewalk. A firetruck doused water on the rubble to keep the dust down, and gusty winds pushed the spray at dozens of spectators who stopped to see the building fall.

Fast Eddie’s owner Dale Kleist said someone from the fire department called at 4 a.m. and announced his bar was “engulfed in flames.”

“I’m driving down here and I thought, ‘I have insurance, my boat’s in the water, I should just go to the lake today.”’

Instead, Kleist, who has owned the popular tavern for nine years, opened for business as usual and stood outside with two employees to watch the crews work.

“I can’t believe they saved (our building),” Kleist said of the firefighters. “We just have a little smoke in there, that’s it. We were lucky.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo; map of fire area