3 killed, 5 injured in Burien apartment fire

A fire that claimed three lives and injured five other people in Burien early Sunday left witnesses shocked at how fast it moved through the two adjacent apartment buildings.

The cause of the blaze, which destroyed the eight-unit Tara Apartments and heavily damaged the identical Jenny Marie Apartments, had not been determined, although a sheriff's spokesman described the fire as suspicious.

The names of the dead have not been released. Thirty-one people were left homeless.

As fire raced through the Tara sometime after midnight, Jerry Rippy, a 34-year-old warehouse worker, grabbed a tree next to his second-floor deck. Shirtless, Rippy slid to safety, leaving his chest covered with bruises, long scratches and pine-tree pitch.

His girlfriend, Shanell Rose, jumped from the deck uninjured. Hours later, she looked haunted as she confessed, "I don't ever want to be that scared again."

Two survivors were hospitalized at Harborview Medical Center, one with burns, the other with broken bones, said Mike Marrs, fire chief of King County Fire District 2. Their names were not released.

Others were treated and released from nearby hospitals.

Sunday afternoon, the smell of smoke still hung in the air as survivors and neighbors watched firefighters mop up from the three-alarm blaze in the 400 block of Southwest 155th Street.

Several witnesses said they couldn't believe how fast the fire consumed the squat, two-story Tara, which had smoke detectors but no sprinklers. They said they first saw the fire inching up a wall of the building's open-air stairwell.

Within minutes the entire building was engulfed and in a half-hour it was gone, said Shan Coleman, a Jamaican musician who lives in an apartment across the street.

Alerted by a woman's screams, Coleman hurled a 15-pound rock through a sliding-glass door to rescue a family trapped in one of Tara's ground-floor units.

Firefighters from five jurisdictions battled the blaze from about 1 to 4 a.m. Sunday.

Marr said firefighters could respond only defensively as the fast-moving blaze incinerated the Tara, spread to the Jenny Marie and then threatened other structures in a neighborhood populated with numerous older, wooden apartment buildings.

Marrs said it was the deadliest fire he'd seen in his 17 years with the fire district. "I feel terrible for the families," he said.

Several neighbors said they heard the victims were a young boy and his grandfather, who were trapped in an upstairs unit in Tara, and a middle-aged disabled man who lived in a unit below them.

Neighbors described the boy, about 8 and a Gregory Heights Elementary School student, as a playful child well-known for his love of animals. His grandfather was thought to be visiting from Oregon.

The disabled man was diabetic, had vision problems and at night often barricaded his bedroom door with a large blue storage container to keep pets out, said David Baggott, 29, one of five who lived in the ground-floor apartment.

Baggott banged repeatedly on the man's door. But he could not pry it open before being forced to flee, along with his wife and parents, as his smoke-filled apartment's ceiling collapsed.

The apartment buildings are located in an area that attracts working-class families, including many from other countries, because rents are modest. Both buildings were fully rented.

The Jenny Marie was built in 1978. The age of the Tara couldn't be determined Sunday.

At the Jenny Marie, $700 a month bought a two-bedroom unit. Now renters like Felix Lopez, a 36-year-old pizza chef from El Salvador, and his family are homeless.

Lopez had watched in amazement early Sunday as Rippy slid down the tree between their two buildings and the tree burst into flames four stories high.

With windows popping from the heat, Lopez and three other family members fled so quickly they could save nothing. And like many others who were burned out, they had no renter's insurance.

Sunday afternoon Lopez stood across the street and stared at his building. Melted metal window blinds hung twisted in the burned wreckage of his home.

"We have nothing, but we have our lives. We can start again," he said, with a slow smile.

The American Red Cross of King and Kitsap Counties is assisting fire victims "for as long as they need assistance," said manager Howard Ferrucci.

At least 20 people have been given lodging (others are staying with relatives and friends), as well as clothing, food and medicine vouchers.

They also were given assistance with their pets. Several families had cats and dogs. Some are missing, and all, like their owners, lost their homes.

Elizabeth Rhodes: erhodes@seattletimes.com