At a community meeting held the evening of July 1st at the Fremont Baptist Church, Mayor McGinn, Seattle Fire Department Chief Gregory Dean, SFD Education Manager Lisa Van Horn and assorted representatives from the SFD, the Seattle Police Department, and Seattle Housing Authority asked the public for their questions and comments on the fatal fire in a tri-plex on June 12th.
Chief Dean described the fire, and the response by fire crews from around the city. The call on the fire came in at 10:04 a.m. that Saturday, and the first engine arrived at 10:09a. Due to equipment malfunction, water didn’t get on the fire until 10:12a. However, the intensity of the fire – and the thick, black smoke of the materials in the structure – make it unlikely that lives would have been saved by a faster response.
The equipment malfunction has been diagnosed and addressed. As for other take-aways, Chief Dean specified “the importance of fire prevention,” and VanHorn took a few minutes to address the need for all households to make a plan, practice it and install smoke detectors less than 10 years old.
During Q & A, several neighbors asked for information to better understand what happened. One near neighbor to the fire asked about the response, and about an apparent confusion as to the location of the fire. Chief Dean denied the engine didn’t know the location of the fire, but that the engine did pull forward of the structure to allow the fire fighters a visual of the situation – and room for the ladder unit to pull up. This neighbor did offer a public apology for insults hurled at SFD representatives in the days following the tragedy.
For more information about preventing fires, and tragedies, visit www.seattle.gov/fire/FMO/fmo.htm