Retirement home fire kills one

A three-alarm fire in a 310-unit retirement home Sunday afternoon caused at least one death and sent eight people to the hospital, fire officials said.

The first crews to arrive at the Four Freedoms retirement home found flames and “lots of black smoke” coming from a sixth-floor unit, said Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick.

The confirmed fatality was a resident of that unit in the seven-story building, she said, adding that she had no additional information on the victim.

Some residents were on their balconies and had to be taken out of the building on fire crews’ ladders, Fitzpatrick said. The cause is under investigation, she said.

Carson, Wash.

Human remains found with plane

U.S. Forest Service employees have found human remains and the wreckage of a twin-engine plane that disappeared in January on a flight from Arizona to Tacoma.

Cold weather and snow made a search for the plane at the time impossible, said Skamania County Undersheriff Dave Cox.

The Cessna 421 was piloted by 42-year-old Martin Ayers of Scottsdale, Ariz., who made a distress call on Jan. 26 in bad weather at 15,000 feet near Soda Peaks Lake, north of Carson. He was alone in the aircraft.

The plane dropped off the radar screen about 10 miles north of Carson.

Two Forest Service workers stumbled across the crash site Friday just south of where the plane was believed to have gone down, the sheriff’s office said.

The crash area is at 2,700 feet on a hill in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, about a mile from the nearest road. The plane apparently exploded.

Searchers found what appears to be paperwork with the plane’s tail number.

Officials with the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board plan to hike to the site today to investigate.