Capitol Hill Fire at 1605 Bellevue Claims a Life

The news about this morning's fire just got grimmer: the P-I reports an elderly man, the last tenant of the apartment building scheduled for destruction, has died before he could even make it to the hospital. The man, in his 80s, was supposed to move out today or face eviction. KING 5 has video of the fire, and a quote from Dennis Saxman, development gadfly, about the victim: "He was having a hard time letting go."

UPDATE: CHS has a chilling photo series and the Slog has more from Dennis Saxman.

We just cycled by and caught some of the clean-up. The firemen were having lunch and keeping the scene under observation. Bellevue was still closed off for that block. Photo: MvB

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By MvB in News on October 27, 2008 10:40 AM

Comments [rss]

jessejb

And now they say it was deliberately set. Shocking!

MvB

Weirder and weirder.

jseattle

Scanner report -- sounds like cops recovered a gun at the scene: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2008/10/27/apartment-fire-update-scanner-gun-recovered

jseattle

Horrible story ripe with sad, strange background. We have some additional details, pictures and background on the anti-development fight from this summer:

http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2008/10/27/fire-at-bellevue-pine

jessejb

So they had trouble getting this guy to leave, he has lots of junk sitting around, they want to tear the building down (thank goodness..its ugly as hell), and demo and construction costs are through the roof. The fire JUST HAPPENS to be on the day he is supposed to be reluctantly moving out and just happens to kill the guy. hmm..

Jeremy

That is the sketchiest building I know. This is crazy. I've been meaning to take pics for weeks because I go by it almost every morning, but there's a pair of cars parked underneath, completely filled with junk. One of them has tags that expired in 1998. I assume these were the possessions of this old guy.