Scary Fire Chars Units Building, Filled With Elderly, Had No Escapes
Fire raced through a 140-unit apartment building in this Navy town Thursday morning, leaving at least one person dead and six missing.
All lived in parts of the building that were destroyed, city fire marshal Scott Rappleye said.
Four trained search dogs were brought from King County to aid in the search.
An unknown number of those unaccounted for could be on Navy assignments. The rest of the 154 residents were staying in a Red Cross shelter at nearby St. Luke’s United Methodist Church or with friends and relatives.
At least 80 people registered at the shelter, said Pamela Leazer, director of the West Sound Chapter of the Red Cross.
Smoke and flames were visible from as far as Seattle, nearly 15 miles to the east across Puget Sound. Fire Chief Al Duke said it was the city’s worst residential fire in his 14 years as chief.
Kitsap County Coroner Ted Zink said the body that was found was too charred to determine even the gender. The remains were found 40 feet from the west side of the building, where the body may have been blown by the force of fire hoses.
More deaths appear likely because of the rapid spread of the fire and the high proportion of elderly residents in the Kona Village apartments, Duke said.
The building lacked exterior fire escapes, a central alarm system, water sprinklers and fire walls or other dividers in the attic, all required under fire codes that were adopted after it was built in 1971, Duke said.
“We’ve always had a suspicion that if it did catch fire, this is what could happen,” he said.
He and Mayor Lynn Horton said landlords have resisted all efforts to require installation of sprinklers and other fire-protection measures in older buildings.
“This is a real tragedy. I think it’s something we have been trying gradually to get a handle on,” Horton said.
“It’s very difficult,” she said. “We try for voluntary compliance. It is a monetary issue … an affordability issue.”
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the National Fire Protection Association will help investigate “to see why this fire spread so rapidly,” Duke said.
There was no indication that the fire was arson, he said.
He said about 40 residents were rescued from upper-story units. At least one, Mario Zahuita, apparently in his 30s, leaped from two stories up and hurt his right ankle. Zahuita and four others, one with chest pains and four who inhaled smoke, were taken to Harrison Memorial Hospital. All were expected to be released by the end of the day, authorities said.
Firefighters brought the blaze under control after about three hours, but most of the four-story, four-sided complex, built around an open area on a hilltop in the north end of town, was reduced to a blackened shell. Only the ground floor, mostly carports tucked under the building, was largely unscarred.
The damage was worst on the upper floors, especially the 270-foot west side, overlooking the Olympic Mountains, and the 320-foot south side, looking downhill across Dyes Inlet to the downtown area.
Initial reports indicated that “somehow, they had a fire that smoldered all night,” Duke said. “When it ignited, it spread all over the place.”
He said the fire was reported at 6:06 a.m. by an apartment manager who was delivering newspapers and heard a smoke detector go off in a third-floor unit. Rappleye said the fire started in Apt. 316.
The manager opened the door, saw smoke and felt heat, then ran downstairs to call from his unit.
That may have given the fire all the oxygen it needed to burst through the fourth floor and into the attic, Duke said.
Less than five minutes before the call, fire crews returning from a fatal traffic accident to a firehouse less than a block away from the apartment house saw nothing amiss, Duke said.
As soon as the call was received, those in the fire station saw smoke and sounded a second alarm. The fire went to a third alarm as soon as the first crews arrived.
By the time they reached the site, much of the top floor was “fully involved in flames,” Duke said.