Update: Apartment fire on 15th SW

Fire charred the northeast corner of an apartment building at 9200 15th SW this afternoon. Multiple fire units and police were on site. NEW INFO: According to a 5 pm update on the Fire Department media hotline, the flames were confined to one unit on the 1st floor, where one person lived; firefighters evacuated everyone safely from this 10-unit apartment building (county property records here), and no one is hurt. (Later Monday night, investigators determined “smoking materials” accidentally started the fire.) Photos are by WSB contributing photojournalist Christopher Boffoli; we also added 2 WSB video clips below these next two photos:

Click To Play

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed, called, and texted to make sure we heard about this!

villagegreen January 7, 2008 (4:37 pm)

Just wondering – Does West Seattle have an inordinate number of fires compared to the rest of the city? There seems to be some type of fire emergency almost daily. It constantly amazes me that people seem to have a hard time not burning things down. Maybe it’s just the great reporting that WSB does and not the number of fires in West Seattle that makes it seem that way.

handmaster January 7, 2008 (4:52 pm)

oh my god, i was just going to comment about all the fires we have here. i swear the blog has something about a fire everyday

WSB January 7, 2008 (4:57 pm)

Well, having worked in citywide media here in Seattle for a long time, I can speak to that a bit. Not really more or less here than anywhere else. We, however, are the first hyperlocal news site in the city reporting breaking news whenever it happens – because that’s what we feel the neighborhood deserves – such as the call to WSHS this morning – it turned out to be no big deal, but if you live near there, or if you were dropping your teens off there (the call was shortly before school started), you no doubt wondered what all the ruckus was, and somebody should be here to tell you. So don’t worry, you’re not living in an unsafe or fire-prone area of town – you’re just getting more info about what’s going on, than some other parts of town are (yet; there are others joining the ranks in other ‘hoods, so that will soon change).

Christopher Boffoli January 7, 2008 (4:59 pm)

villagegreen: It is funny you ask that question because I often get the same thing from friends when they hear that I was off covering another fire. I don’t think that we’re any more fire prone over here on the WS peninsula. It is probably your second suggestion; that the nature of the West Seattle Blog’s hyper-local media coverage means that more fires get covered. The WSB fills an important niche for much of the news that the Seattle Times and PI simply do not cover. I mean, they didn’t even have a mention of that woman who drove the car up the wire. It makes me wonder what else is happening that we’d never hear about because it simply wasn’t profitable enough for them to bother to cover.

Jim January 7, 2008 (5:11 pm)

I hear on KING 5 that many of the rigs that responded came out of the training center on Myers Way. That lessened the travel time for this major response. They were all in the neighborhood.

WSB January 7, 2008 (5:19 pm)

thanks, Jim. They may have covered it for tv but nothing on their website as of this writing … maybe later. We’ve just added two video clips (click anywhere in the window above “click to play”). If you look at the 911 log listing for this callout, its size IS really impressive. Haven’t seen that many units in a while.

que January 7, 2008 (7:21 pm)

Is that what the two hovering helicopters were all about? I saw them at 3:45 this afternoon, and it would have been right around there, I thought they were over Westwood Village, but distance is so hard to judge in the air…

WSB January 7, 2008 (7:46 pm)

Yes, especially since it was so (relatively) close to 5 pm news time (and 4 is on at 4 pm), news choppers hustled over for the aerial view.

que January 7, 2008 (8:41 pm)

I just have to say that WSB rules for hyperlocal coverage. I always have felt that WS got short shrift in the local news, that if something happened in WS, it may as well have happened on Mars as far as the mainstream local news was concerned. We all now have a place to turn to in order to find out what is going on. So, a big thank you to WSB.

WSMom January 7, 2008 (10:00 pm)

I happened upon the apartment fire and called 911 at about 3:30 this afternoon. “Seattle Police and Fire, can you hold please” is the answer I received. It’s interesting what goes through your mind at a time like this. The fire was quite big and there was an impressive amount of smoke. I stayed on hold, hoping someone else had already gotten through to a real operator. Not knowing what I should do, I started pounding on doors and yelling “FIRE, GET OUT”. We should all learn how to say “fire” and “get out of the building” in Spanish. When the 911 operator came on the line, she asked if there were people in the building and when I said yes she told me to get them out. It was actually reassuring to be told to do what I was already doing. I carried a little boy out of his family’s apartment and helped him get his shoes on once we were at the sidewalk. His parents had their hands full lifting their newborn’s stroller down the stairs. It was very cold outside and all the little boy had on were pajamas, so I was glad to find some of my son’s outgrown clothes in a giveaway bag in my car and I set to work putting some warm clothes on the child. His parents didn’t speak English so I used the universal language of pointing and shivering to get their permission to dress their child. Right about this time the first of four or five fire trucks pulled up and quickly got the fire under control. My son sat patiently in the car the whole time waiting for me to get back and continue on to his brother’s basketball game. I’m going to make it a point tomorrow to learn how to say “fire, get out” in Spanish just in case. It does seem that lately fires do occur quite often in West Seattle!