| HeraldNet - Snohomish County's online news source |
 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2010 5:49 am |
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Local News 
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One dead after fire guts apartments EVERETT — Stephanie Ortiz woke around 5:30 this morning to the smell of smoke in her north Everett apartment.She opened and closed the windows and went back to bed — until the sound of creaking and crashing from below woke her again. She cracked the blinds on her bedroom window and saw flames and black smoke shooting toward her window from the apartment below. "I called 9-1-1 and I was screaming into the phone," she said, standing just outside her apartment this morning, watching a phalanx of firefighters blast the blaze with water. An early morning two-alarm fire ripped through a 10-unit apartment house at 3116 Lombard Ave., sending a dozen people scrambling for safety as a mix of ash and snow fell over the neighborhood. Fire crews late this morning discovered the body of an apparent victim, Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz said. Major crimes detectives, including arson investigators, were called to the scene to assist in the investigation. At this time there is no hint that the fire was deliberately set, but because there was a death the fire-damaged apartments are being treated as a crime scene until determined otherwise, Goetz said. The people who lived in the apartment building did their best this morning to save each other. Ortiz and her boyfriend, Vana Polpanpua, threw on clothes and ran door-to-door in the early 1900s apartment building, pounding on doors and screaming "Fire! Get out! Fire!" Polpanpua ran downstairs to the apartment below. He kicked in the door. The unit’s windows blasted out and he was met by a wall of inky black smoke, he said. His neighbor didn’t seem to be home. Many in the building said they didn’t hear smoke alarms. Their neighbors’ pounding got them up and out of the house. The fire moved fast. Firefighters arrived at about 6 a.m. and found flames ravaging the two-story building. By 6:15 a.m., flames already were eating through the roof and licking through top floor windows. The heat was so intense that it blistered the paint on an office building next door. Tavares Williams has lived on the ground floor since October. He said he was awakened by people yelling "Fire!" and pounding on doors. "I grabbed whatever, just what was on my back," he said, holding a Styrofoam mug of coffee and watching the fire from his friend’s car. Other residents stood outside on the street, wrapped in blankets. One man had tears streaming down his face. "It was so far gone by the time the first crews got here," Everett Fire Marshal Glen Martinsen said. "A huge column of smoke could be seen from the station." Numerous firefighters battled the blaze from every direction. Fire crews tried to immediately search inside but had to retreat. They doused the apartment and fought to keep the flames from spreading to other nearby homes and apartment buildings. They blasted so much water that it ran in rivulets down the building’s concrete stairs, pooled ankle-deep on Lombard and flowed down side streets and alleys onto Broadway. Heather Doyle lived in one of the apartments with her friend, who recently had a baby. "She woke me up and said, ‘We have to go,’" Doyle said. Her friend escaped from the apartment carrying her 1-month-old baby clutched in her arms. She managed to save nothing else. Neither she nor Doyle had renter’s insurance. "She left formula, diapers — everything," Doyle said. It’s likely the fire had been burning for awhile before someone noticed it, Martinsen said. The cause remains under investigation. A total of 12 people — 11 adults and one infant — were displaced by the fire, Martinsen said. The Snohomish County Chapter of the Red Cross was helping find emergency shelter. At the fire scene this morning, many of the people who lived in the apartment reported repeated problems with flickering lights and inconsistent heating. Doris Lopez, who lived at the building for two years, said the apartment managers sent tenants a letter warning them not to use Christmas lights. The letter didn’t say why. The building had undergone recent updates, Lopez said, but she had little heat in hers. Cassi Lawing said the fire was so hot she could feel it at her apartment a couple of doors down the block from the burning building. "The flames were blowing close to the window. It was so hot," Lawing said. "I’ve never seen anything like it." Robert Kruml and his 6-year-old son stood on the street watching firefighters battle the blaze. Kruml lives next door to apartment building, but couldn’t be sure from the street whether his home was spared. He waited to hear if the fire had spread. A police officer encouraged Kruml to take shelter on a bus set up for victims. "It’s hard to take a seat on a bus not knowing if you’ve lost everything," Kruml said. |
Photo Gallery: Everett Fire
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