BELLEVUE — A three-alarm fire heavily damaged the Masin’s furniture store in downtown Bellevue early Monday, but no injuries were reported.
Bellevue Fire Lt. Todd Dickerboom said the fire was reported about 5 a.m. Firefighters worked more than two hours to control the flames.
Dickerboom said the cause of the fire was not known. The last person known to be inside the building left it late Sunday night, he said.
Damage to the building was "extreme," Dickerboom said. He said there were no sprinklers in the older, three-story building, which was engulfed in flames by the time firefighters arrived.
Residents of a nearby condominium were evacuated for a time, but allowed to return after flames were knocked down.
The furniture business occupied two of the three floors in the building. There were five businesses on the top floor, including a salon, tailor shop and computer business.
Olympia
Mount Rainier resort developers unhappy about delays: A hearing on legal challenges to a proposal for a $70 million resort west of Mount Rainier National Park has been delayed until March, upsetting developers. The hearing in Thurston County Superior Court, originally set for July 27, was postponed initially to Sept. 27, then to Dec. 21, and is now set for March 22. The delays have made it difficult to attract investors, who are waiting for legal issues to be resolved before deciding whether to put money into the proposed Mount Rainier Resort at Park Junction, project manager Sylvia Cleaver said. Planning began in 1992 for the resort, which would include a 270-room lodge, condominiums, a conference center for groups as large as 500 people, an 18-hole golf course, tennis courts, a spa, shopping mall and train station along Highway 706 about 10 miles west of the main entrance to the park.
DNR asks for $36 million to pay summer fire bills: State Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland is asking the Legislature for $36 million to cover firefighting on state and private forest land this year. And he expects to get it, despite the $1 billion budget shortfall that’s forcing the state to cut other areas. "I don’t anticipate any difficulties," Sutherland said, adding that legislators with fire-scarred districts do a good job persuading colleagues that the money was well-spent. The 2001 fire season, marked by an extreme drought, was the most expensive in years, Sutherland said. A total of 227,000 acres burned this year in Washington, with one major fire persisting into early November. While there were fewer fires this year than in the past, the 2001 blazes were larger, more remote and harder to fight, Sutherland said. The $36 million the department is requesting this year would supplement $7.7 million the Legislature has already appropriated for firefighting. The Department of Natural Resources is responsible for fighting fires on state trust land and private forests, a total of 12 million acres. Private landowners pay, too — a flat fee of $14.50, plus 25 cents for every acre over 50 acres. Private landowners contributed $16.8 million to fire protection during the most current two-year budget cycle.
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