‘This has been a risk:’ Backyard fire at North Seattle home puts neighbors on edge

An early Thursday morning backyard fire at a home in North Seattle has left neighbors there outraged and on edge.

The owner of the home says the people living there haven’t paid him rent in two years. Neighbors said they’ve complained to the city about fire hazards multiple times.

It was just before 6 a.m. on Thursday when neighbors woke up to flames and the smell of smoke.

“My partner and I just jump, you know, we’re still in our PJs, run into the backyard and you know the flames are 30 feet in the air,” Justin Almeida, a neighbor, said.

Lauren Maclean and her husband Kyle live next door and they said it was terrifying.

“I was terrified and in panic and I just kept thinking, ‘I gotta get my dog, we’ve gotta get our documents and we’ve gotta go,’” Lauren said.

The Seattle Fire Department said the fire was started by a generator but things got even more dangerous with materials close by.

“That was when gas cans started exploding in the backyard. Probably five or six full cans of gas back there,” Kyle said. Neighbors said firefighters were able to get the flames under control quickly, but they also said they saw this coming.

“This has been a risk, they’ve been running these generators and having these gas cans back there for months now,” Kyle said. “We’ve been reporting it to the city and nothing’s really been happening.”

Riz Samad owns the home and said the people there have not paid rent since March of 2020. “They stopped paying rent, they’ve gone (from) bad to worse,” Samad said.

The tenants were protected under the city’s eviction moratorium but that ended in February of this year. He said the original tenants are a man and woman with kids, but he and neighbors told KIRO 7 that there’s a constant flow of people coming in and out of the house.

“We just want these people to go away so these people can live peacefully,” Samad said.

The city shut off the electricity and the utilities which is why the tenants have been running a generator, but now those unpaid bills fall on Samad. The bills total nearly $20,000 for electric and utilities.

“I would never advise anybody to own a property in the city of Seattle and rent it,” Samad said. He and other neighbors said they’ve tried asking officials for help but they’ve gotten nowhere.

“I met the mayor, Bruce Harrell, he said he probably doesn’t know what to do. I met AG Bob Ferguson, I met all the politicians and everybody, nobody has the answer,” Samad said.

The neighbors tell us they feel abandoned by the city.

“I called Councilmember Juarez’s office, left a message, tried to call the non-emergency line for SPD, the non-emergency line said go to the website,” Almeida said.

Samad has hired lawyers but said the legal process has been slow moving. Now, the neighbors are also considering legal action.

“I worry about what would have happened if that fire had gotten out of control. I mean, it’s not just our lives, we’re talking about kids’ lives, their lives,” Almeida said.

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