Neighbors’ bravery gets everyone out safe from south Everett apartment blaze

EVERETT — Thanks in part to valiant rescues by neighbors, no one was injured in a large apartment fire in south Everett this afternoon.

Calls first came in for the two-alarm fire about 4:20 p.m. in the Copperstone Apartments complex at 420 85th Place SW, near West Casino Road. The flames were controlled a short time later, though small fires continued to break out in the building’s walls and attic, according to Glen Martinsen, assistant chief fire marshal for the Everett Fire Department.

The fire may have started in a stairwell where an electrical panel and two cardboard boxes of stored items were located, Martinsen said.

The building, one of many in the complex, was engulfed in flames and smoke could be seen for blocks when firefighters arrived.

Several neighbors ran around, knocked on doors and windows and yelled for people to get out, residents said.

Elvis Hrustic, 16, led a confused woman and her three young children out of their apartment.

Araceli Guzman, 25, heard someone yelling about the fire in English, but she speaks only Spanish and stayed inside, according to a neighbor who interpreted her comments.

Then Hrustic ran in and grabbed her 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter and pulled them out. Guzman grabbed her 1-month-old daughter and followed. She said she would not have left had Hrustic not burst in and grabbed her kids.

“I didn’t care about my life, it wasn’t important to me, I just cared about those kids,” Hrustic said.

Guzman told the neighbor that upon leaving, she looked to her left and saw a wall of fire.

A man who was trapped in the burning building escaped by climbing down lattice work on the side of the building, neighbors said.

The man, standing on his third-floor balcony in the rear of the building, told neighbors below that his apartment was full of smoke and fire and he couldn’t go out the front.

Shane Allan, 33, and others urged the man to climb down.

“I thought he was going to jump. He climbed down like Spiderman, I thought he was going to fall,” said Allan, a former Navy firefighter. Allan and another neighbor helped him reach the bottom, he said.

Annette Skiles heard two loud pops and looked outside. “I saw a wall of fire and I slammed the door,” she said.

Skiles and her brother, along with roommate John Mitchell, ran back through the apartment and out the back. They said flames and smoke were coming into their apartment.

“It was moving so fast, it was moving like quicksilver,” Mitchell said.

As they ran, Skiles’ brother saw two electrical boxes on the side of the building fully engulfed, she said.

Martinsen said six units were burned and that six others may have been affected. The American Red Cross, Snohomish County chapter, was trying to arrange shelter for those displaced by the fire.