RESIDENTS FLEE QUEEN ANNE CONDO FIRE

Jane Hadley (Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter, Monday, August 23, 1999)

Residents of a five-story condominium on lower Queen Anne were driven from the building just before noon yesterday by a fire that destroyed one unit. There were no injuries to residents or firefighters, but a cat that lived in the unit where the fire started was missing, said Battalion Chief Mike Johnson. The fire started with a propane barbecue on the balcony of a fourth-floor unit on the west side of the Wilson Court condominium at 420 Valley Street, Johnson said. The couple who lived in that condo were not home when the fire started but returned after it had been extinguished. The woman cried, "Oh my God!" as she approached Johnson to find out what had happened.

Fire Department spokeswoman Sheila Strehle later said the barbecue had been turned on to the clean cycle and was left unattended too close to vinyl siding, which caught fire. The safety message, she said, is never leave a grill unattended and keep at least 10 feet of space around a grill.

Their unit is uninhabitable, and there probably was considerable smoke and water damage to their possessions, Johnson said.

Catherine Mitchell, owner of a fifth-floor condo in the building, was in her pajamas and painting her toenails when suddenly, "I heard people screaming. It turned out to be my neighbors," she said. "They were shouting, 'The building's on fire! Get out! Get out!'''

The neighbors began helping Mitchell try to round up her two 8-year-old male cats, but the effort failed.
"The cats were hysterical," she said. "We couldn't hold them. I was trying to shove them into some pillow cases." The cats ran underneath her bed, and smoke was filling the apartment.

"It was so hard to get them out from under the bed. I didn't want to endanger my neighbors any further," she said. "I was pretty upset."

She grabbed her keys and a pair of jeans and left. Later, she realized she had left without her hat, which she wears to cover hair loss from chemotherapy. Mitchell choked up later when a firefighter reported that her cats were safe and doing well. Another cat was not found, however.

Jonathan Granato, owner of a ground-floor unit in the 7-year-old building, said he was washing his hair in the shower when the fire alarm went off, but he didn't take it seriously at first because the condominium had a false alarm last month.

"When I left the shower, I saw smoke pouring in my window," he said. "Someone pounded on my door and yelled, 'There's a fire! Get out!'" Granato said. He took his keys and left.

One of those doing the pounding was John Wahl, who rents a unit on the fifth floor with his girlfriend. They were watching television and preparing lunch, when Wahl thought he smelled burning plastic. But he thought it might be the car hobbyists who live in a house next door.

Then he heard somebody say there was a fire. "I went to my bedroom, and the window was just covered with smoke," Wahl said. He and his girlfriend grabbed their cell phones and keys and pulled the fire alarm in the hallway. His girlfriend called 911 on her cell phone, while Wahl began pounding on doors. Another man joined him.

"We hit every floor. He did one end, and I did the other," Wahl said. Then the two opened a panel with a fire hose in it and began spraying down the door of the unit on fire, as well as the units on either side.

"We just wanted to keep the fire from (getting into) the hallway," he said. They stopped when Wahl's girlfriend called him on his cell phone to tell him the fire department had arrived.

"The fire department was here in about three minutes. It could have been a lot worse," Granato said. Mitchell said the exodus was calm and that building residents were amazingly helpful. "All my neighbors made sure everybody got out. They were knocking on every door, asking: 'Is there anything I can do for you?'"

Her unit was above the one that caught on fire, and firefighters told her it suffered some water damage. Strehle said the department was pleased that the building had a working sprinkler and alarm system.