Seattle apartment fire kills 5

SEATTLE – A blaze tore through a Seattle apartment Saturday and killed five people, including a number of children, fire officials said.

The fire was reported just after 10 a.m. in what authorities described as a two-story apartment unit in the city’s Fremont neighborhood north of downtown. Property records indicate the building is owned by the Seattle Housing Authority.

The first engine to respond had a problem with a pump that prevented it from spraying water on the fire, but a second unit arrived two minutes later and was able to fight the fire, said Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick. The fire was put out within about 40 minutes of when it was reported.

It was the highest death toll for a Seattle fire in recent memory.

“We haven’t had anything like this in at least the last 10 years,” Fitzpatrick said.

The fire did not spread to any neighboring apartments. Its cause was not immediately known.

Fitzpatrick told the Seattle Times that a 21-year-old woman, a 14-year-old boy, a 7-year-old girl, a 5-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl died in the fire.

Chaplains joined Seattle fire investigators on scene, and two women were so distraught they were taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Fitzpatrick said.

Abdi Roble, a representative of Muslim Housing Services, which operates apartments in the building, told the Times that the unit was rented by a woman from Eritrea with two children in preschool.