Fire kills two in Yakima

YAKIMA – Two people were killed in a fire early Monday in a small, 100-year-old wooden apartment building.

Yakima Fire Chief Charlie Hines said the fire’s origin was suspicious.

Autopsies were scheduled Wednesday for the victims, a man and a woman, whose identities were not released by Assistant Fire Marshal Jim Fuehrer.

Three other adults in the building escaped without injury but investigators initially feared another person had been inside, Fuehrer said. After the walls were shored up for safety, searchers found no trace of another body, he said.

Firefighters arrived within four minutes of the 3:23 a.m. call to the two-story carriage house and hayloft that had been converted into four apartments and found flames shooting from upstairs windows, Hines said.

As firefighters began their attack, the roof collapsed, but no firefighters were injured, he said. Firefighters found two victims in an upstairs room when they looked in a window from a ladder.

Hines described the structure as “a transient place in a low income area where a lot of people come and go.”

Four cars parked nearby were destroyed.

The Red Cross was helping about 10 nearby residents who were displaced by the fire.