Three houses are smoldering after a two-alarm fire that continued for more than an hour in West Seattle.
Two of the houses that burned are total losses.
Thick black smoke could be seen for miles across Seattle, even from parts of Bainbridge Island.
Fauntleroy Avenue Southwest was closed near Lincoln Park in West Seattle as firefighters battled the blaze, and traffic to the West Seattle ferry terminal was affected. Before 9:30 p.m., all lanes of Fauntleroy reopened.
See photos of the West Seattle fire here.
The two-alarm fire in the 6700 block of 46th Avenue Southwest began about 4:40 p.m. Firefighters said no injuries were immediately reported.
Mary Bell told KIRO 7 she was in her home late this afternoon when she heard crackling from her neighbor’s house.
“My neighbor does crafts sometimes, and I thought well, what’s she up to now? And then I heard a big boom,” Bell said.
She said she ran outside and saw the flames start to catch onto her house.
Her daughter, who lives nearby, said she heard screams from the neighbor whose house had caught fire first.
“That was the worst part is the screams. I didn’t know if it was my mom. I didn’t know who it was,” said Molly McEvoy.
McEvoy rushed to the house, where she helped get their two dogs out of the backyard.
Bell said the flames “spread like wildfire, and it felt like hours before the fire department got here, but clearly it wasn’t.”
The Seattle Fire Department told KIRO 7 their efforts were challenged by the distance from the homes to the closest fire hydrant.
“We also asked Seattle Public Utilities to boost water pressure on this hydrant, because we had three hose lines running off this one hydrant, which we needed to boost water pressure in order to run three hose lines,” said Kyle Moore, the fire department spokesperson.
Seattle Public Utilities sent crews to help locate another source of water. They will be issuing a report on what happened, as they usually do with all incidents.
Crews monitored the houses for hot spots overnight. Investigators will be able to look at the debris in the morning to determine a cause.
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