Apartment Complex Fire, 66 Units Destroyed (Seattle, WA - September 1991) » Fire Department Dispatch and Initial Operations

The first call on the fire was received by the police 911 communications center at 2135. (See Appendix C for a complete timeline.) The call was passed to the Fire Department at 2136. The first alarm response was dispatched 2137. It included three engines (Engines 33,28, 36), two ladders (Ladders 12 and 7) and a battalion chief (BC 5). This was the standard response to an apartment complex fire in the residential area of the city.

There elapsed five minutes from the first call to 911 to arrival of the first unit, Engine 33, at the scene. The engine pulled up on the east side of the complex at its southeast comer, close to a hydrant, as planned. The lieutenant ordered the crew to connect to the hydrant and to lay a manifold and a 2 1/2-inch line, which they started to do.

As the lieutenant rounded the southeast comer of the building to get to the south side where the flames were, the sight was almost overwhelming: flames extended in a 40-foot wide swath from the ground floor over the top of the building. The full extent of the fire was not visible from the front (flames were spreading from front to back of the initial units and then out and up the courtyard side of the structure).

A woman on the second floor of the east side of Building D (on 50th Avenue South) started to prepare to jump.

The first-in engine company had one officer plus two firefighters. They could not both assist in a rescue and continue to lay and advance a line (each a 2-person job). They opted to assist the woman in imminent peril, raised a ground ladder and rescued her and her dog. As a result, they were not able to get water on the fire until about eight minutes after they arrived. By that time the fire was well beyond the control of a single line.

The next units in were Engine 28 and Ladder 12, arriving together from the station they shared about one and a half to two minutes after Engine 33. As they approached the fire and saw a large column of smoke, the engine company officer called for an immediate second alarm, which doubled the complement on its way to the fire and added the deputy chief and support units.

The ladder truck pulled in behind Engine 33 on the east side. The ladder company officer reported that at this time almost the entire outside of Building C was burning - about 150 feet horizontally. Neither they nor the engine could drive to the south side of the building because of the way the complex was laid out. The structure of the complex was such that cars had to drive through a low overhang to get access to the south parking lot -- and fire vehicles could not get through. (Had they been able to park the vehicle where they would have preferred, it almost surely would have been destroyed, since all cars in the area were destroyed.) The ladder company started to raise its aerial and take off a ground ladder to meet the burgeoning demand for rescues from all levels and several sides of the complex.

Ladder 12 arrived with one officer plus three crew. They were short one person, who had been detailed to the engine company in their station (Engine 28) to fill its complement to three.

While the aerial was being raised, the ladder truck temporarily lent a man to assist Engine 33’s lieutenant in resuming actions to get a line into play. However, by this time the ropes and rubber gaskets of the manifold that had been dropped on the south of the building by Engine 33 had started to smolder from radiant heat, and the line had to be used in a fog pattern to protect the officer and the lines while a monitor was set up on the south side. The loaned aerial man went back to his primary duty on the aerial as soon as it was raised, leaving the lieutenant on his own with the first line on the fire.

Engine 28, the second-in engine company from the first alarm response, pulled in on the west side of the complex. They saw heavy smoke coming across the top of the building from the south side, and many people climbing down exterior balconies, with four trapped on the top balcony. They were able to lay a manifold for two 1 3/4-inch handlines and to initiate rescue operations in parallel.

Engine 28 had been short because their rookie had been detailed to a fire watch for the president of South Korea who was in town that day. However, the rookie asked permission to attend the fire and arrived with the first arriving aid unit; he was able to immediately assist his engine company, which made a material difference in their being able to lay a line while also effecting a rescue. They estimate that his fortuitous addition allowed them to put water on the fire several minutes earlier than they otherwise would have been able to do. This is thought to have ultimately helped save Building A.

The third-in engine, Engine 36 (an extra manpower unit with five firefighters) and the second ladder of the initial response arrived within 10 minutes of the call to 911, about five minutes after the first responding unit.3 By then people were climbing down from balconies, jumping off balconies, dropping children from windows, and scrambling to safety on all sides of three buildings. Hundreds of people were gathering in the streets to watch.

The first-in battalion was headed by an acting battalion chief, Captain Molly Deuce, the highest ranking female firefighter in Seattle. She arrived about 5-7 minutes after the first arriving engine company and found flames “visible from floors l-4 and approximately the entire length of the building.” She immediately called for a third alarm and had the thirdin company (E-36) lay exposure lines into the east exposure building.

Next » Second Phase of Operations