SEATTLE — The three-alarm fire that burned a vacant apartment building in Seattle’s First Hill neighborhood Monday morning came as no surprise to neighbors.
People who live on 9th Avenue and Madison Street reported seeing trespassers break in and light small fires in the building in the months leading up to Monday’s fire.
“We just knew that this building was going to go up at some point. It’s extremely frustrating,” neighbor Emily Nagel said.
Nagel said she was woken up around 5:00 a.m. to police officers alerting residents in her building about the fire burning on the same block.
“There were flames shooting up out of the roof of the building. There were embers coming over from that building to our building,” she said.
Fire crews reported that several individuals were in the basement of the abandoned building and got out on their own. Fire crews saw someone in a window of the second story of the building when they arrived, but it has not been determined if that person was able to get out of the fire, Chief Harold Scoggins of the Seattle Fire Department said.
“We did not find anyone inside the structure, but we haven’t been able to get in and do a thorough search of the building. There was a possibility of people inside in the fire, and that’s a problem with vacant buildings in the city,” Scoggins said.
The building was vacated after a large fire in June 2022. Fire crews rescued multiple people from the building during that fire, and two residents were hospitalized in critical condition.
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Fire officials determined the 2022 was accidental, but Scoggins added that the structure of the building was compromised.
“I think vacant buildings aren’t vacant in this city. They become a hazard as soon as they become vacant,” First Hill resident Mike Cory said.