Once the fire broke out of the apartment of origin, it spread
extremely rapidly -- so fast that fire officials considered the fire suspicious
at first and called in the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
Bureau to investigate.
The fire occurred at the end of an unusually hot end-ofsummer day.
The sun had shone all day on the south end of the building where the
apartment of origin was. The entire preceding month also had been
unusually dry. The wood was dry.
A light breeze was blowing, which aided the spread of the fire.
The fire coming out of the broken front bedroom window initially
impinged on the base of the brick decorative fascia that separated
segments of the cedar screen running up the face of the balconies. The
screen was comprised of vertical 2x6’s. It soon ignited and acted as a path
for the fire to quickly extend vertically up the entire 40-foot face of the
screen, and also horizontally across the screen. The fire also quickly
ignited the cedar siding and cedar underside of the walkway ceilings. The
fire spread both east and west on the face of the building.
The fire continued to spread throughout the event along the cedar
screens, walkway ceilings and the siding. Units were ignited primarily by
radiation through their windows rather than through the walls of
neighboring units or through ceilings between units.
As units became involved in the building of origin, fire spread
through them from the front to the rear of the building - the pool-side
interior of the complex. It spread along the rear (courtyard) side as well as
the front side. The fire spread from Building C to Buildings B and D.
One tenant (Ms. Hall-Austin) was quoted in the Seattle newspaper
as seeing smoke “curling like a tornado” when she opened her front door to
the short hallway. As she carried her 5-year-old to the stairway and ran
down, “flames exploded along the wall.” Another tenant expressed disbelief
that flames could spread that fast. “It just went swoosh,” said Claudette
Williams.2 She then caught a 5-6-year-old boy who was dropped to her
from a second floor balcony.
Next » Escape
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