‘Worst house in Hoquiam’ destroyed in weekend fire

Published 8:52 pm Monday, December 24, 2007

HOQUIAM — For 25 years, sanitation and fire code enforcement officials tried in vain to get the owner of a 114-year-old house to clean up what they said was the worst eyesore in town.

On Saturday, the problem apparently solved itself when the house, after years at the top of the town’s abatement list, burned down.

Clothing, old chairs, spare parts, appliances, wood, tires, lamps and other items in the two-story structure and littering the front, back and side yards helped fuel the flames, fire Capt. Dave Everitt said.

The cause was under investigation, but there was no indication of foul play, Everett said.

“It’s going to be hard to investigate this fire, considering the building caved in on itself,” he added.

The house was almost a total loss when firefighters arrived at 1:30 p.m. By the time they had the flames out, an hour later, most of the wood frame collapsed, and only the front face of the house was standing.

Firefighters said they had a difficult time getting through the debris accumulated by owner Kitty Rowell, 70, to gain access to the flames.

The lone person inside the home when the fire started, a man, was evacuated safely.

“If we would have had to go in and extract someone, it would have been nearly impossible,” Everitt said.

Nearly every corner was filled with items Rowell had bought, kept or found in trash bins since she moved into the house in 1972.

“I do have a lot of stuff,” she told The Daily World in 2001. “Some of it is my grandmother’s and mother’s, my own and things I have collected through the years that were my kids’,” she said.

Denying her numerous possessions were “junk,” she maintained that as a disabled retiree on a fixed income she lacked the resources to fix up the home. She said she used to keep extra clothing and sleeping bags to give to transients or people who lost their homes to fire.

Rowell, who could not be reached for comment following the fire Saturday, began getting warnings about the condition of the home in 1982 and was ticketed a number of times for waste accumulation in violation of the fire code.

The Grays Harbor County Department of Public Services declared the building “unsanitary” and “unsafe for human habitation,” several liens were filed against the property and Rowell ignored several deadlines set by the town’s abatement board to clean up or leave, said Lon Howell, a building official.

For years it was known as “the worst house in Hoquiam,” Howell said.

The county assessor’s office had recently valued the house at zero, and Rowell was notified Friday to remove her piles of possessions from the municipal right of way or face stepped up abatement proceedings after Jan. 1, town Administrator Brian Shay said.

“We’ve been trying for a number of years to get her to clean up the property, and she’s pretty much ignored us,” Mayor Jack Durney said. “It’s unfortunate that she’s lost her home before Christmas, but it shows what happens when people have a lot of combustibles lying around.”

Rowell was served several times with a search warrant and ordered to clean up the mess outside, but the piles soon grew back, Howell said.

“I like Kitty,” he said. “We’ve always had open communications and discussed all the proceedings. We tried to sit down and come up with solutions but the solutions didn’t happen. I do feel really bad for her and I wish her the best.”