1401 S. 18th St., Renton, WA - Apartment/Urban-Wildland Fire

[bbirmingham]

Shortly before 2pm on 19 July 2014, Renton Fire & Emergency Services was dispatched to a reported apartment fire.  The first arriving engine found a fully engulfed apartment building.  A couple other building were being threatened.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

While units were enroute, the large thermal column was noted and a second alarm was called.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

Winds, with gusts up to 30mph, push the flames into nearby buildings, trees, and shrubs.  Burning embers and debris created small fires to the north and east of the incident.  The fire quickly grew to four alarms.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

Renton's Ladder 11 was the first of several elevated master streams set up over the course of the afternoon.  Ladder 11 was able to knock down a good portion of fire in the first building as well as some of the related grass fire.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

Many neighbors lent a helping hand to the effort by stopping some of the small grass fires and providing bottled water to displaced residents and fire fighters.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

The burned out section seen here is across two streets from the first fire building.  The burned section, under the power line support, at the top of the picture is across yet another, fairly wide street.  This is the beginning of the fire's nearly two mile run through the woods and grass.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

Firefighters and command staff check the map book and determine where the fire is going and where they need to be to protect homes or stop the fire.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

Renton requested and received great mutual aid support.  Strike Teams (or maybe they were actually task forces) came from Eastern King County, Seattle, Snohomish County and Pierce County.

 

The team shown here is from east King County (Zone 1) and includes apparatus from Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

The team from Seattle was set up in a residential neighborhood about 3-4 blocks from the fire.  Their aerial was shooting water over the houses into the grassland behind the houses.  The fire was working its way through that grassland.

 

   

[bbirmingham]

This is probably one of the largest fire incidents I have observed.  At the original fire location, nearly 20 apartment units were destroyed (2 buildings) and another 10 were damaged (1 building).  This fire started a grass fire that ran about 2 miles, fortunately between neighborhoods and apartment/condo complexes.  Many apparatus were relocated numerous times.  Different incident command posts were setup and moved as required.  The mutual aid system appeared to work well.  No firefighters or citizens were injured.

 

I think a big thank you is necessary for the King County fire departments that responded and sent help and to those departments who answered the mutual aid requests in Pierce and Snohomish counties.

 

   

[rlukas1]

Thanks for posting Brian.  Great photos and coverage of a very large area of fire with steep hillside and difficult terrain. 

[Roto-Ray]

Brian,

 

Great set of images and story as well.  Thanks for posting!

[hank]

Good photos!

 

tHANKs

[Bryce]

Great shots. My dad drove down to this from Kirkland (I was up in the mountains camping) and said that Valley Com had 7 talk groups with 2 patches set up for the various ICs that resulted from the long run of the fire. Quite an event.

[DaveYoung]

Great photos and narration. I saw an overhead pic (on komo twitter feed) of the scene in post #9 (Seattle Ladder 12). It looked like they had put out a seriously large section of grass/brush fire with the ladder pipe.

 

Well done by all the responding agencies. 

[Guest]

Ho-lee shee-it!

 

How was the fire called in?  Any idea? 

 

Phone alarm, automatic alarm, master box?

 

Do they know what started it?


That had some SERIOUS headway before the FD got there!

[Roto-Ray]

 

Phone alarm, automatic alarm, master box?

 

 

Master box?

[Guest]

Sorry Taylor, master connected fire alarm box, through a Gamewell system.

[Roto-Ray]

Sorry Taylor, master connected fire alarm box, through a Gamewell system.

 

Gotcha!  The only exposure I have to Gamewell system (or anything even like it) is from what I've seen on the interwebs, so even after 20 years of fire service experience, that portion of it is still foreign to me.

[bbirmingham]

Based on the information I heard over the scanner, there were a number of phone calls to 911 to report this fire.  There may have been manual pull stations that may alert a monitoring company.  I would be a bit surprised if there was any kind of automatic alarm system.