Seattle City Hall by the amazing Seattlest Flickr Contributor--Grundlepuck Seattle City Hall was evacuated this morning because of a minor fire. A fluorescent light on the second floor caught on fire, causing embers to shower on nearby desks. City Hall employees tried to quell the fire with an extinguisher to no avail, so firefighters were called. This is the first fire in the new City Hall building, there was no damage reported. Employees returned to......

We bring you the news as it happens or a little bit later. This was about 3:50pm today: REDACTED says: Holy shit, the building across the street is on fire. REDACTED says: flames and everything. MvB says: no kidding? REDACTEDsays: the Olive 8 MvB says: what's an Olive 8 REDACTED says: It's under construction but you can see the flames and smoke. MvB says: what street is that? REDACTED says: Olive 8 is the name......

We're sorry to hear that a nail salon, a chiropractic office, and a Panda Express were destroyed by a fire in Renton this morning. And glad to hear no one was hurt. A shift supervisor at the Diamond Lil's casino across the street called 911 and said the fire was burning on a table inside "Stop 4 Nails" and quickly spread. The blaze also destroyed the other three businesses in the structure; Panda Express, Hemp......

We don't know about you, but when we were 19, we made some pretty indefensible decisions. Baking a pizza while blind drunk, then forgetting about it, causing the NYC fire department to evacuate our girlfriend's dorm while we were passed out in her bed comes to mind. Surely our city's sports columnists made similarly idiotic choices in their final year of teenagerdom. Yet the entire Seattle sports community is reading their Spencer Hawes-o-scopes, trying to......

Last night a record 450 teams packed into the Old Pequliar for Seattlest Trivia. Sadly we had to disqualify 432 of the squads when they would not participate in the mandatory drug testing. The remaining 18 team answered questions on tragic romances, the World Series, John C. Reilly movies, and Project Runway. Funny story, Trivia Master David didn't know how many seasons of Project Runway there were, and was shouted down when he announced......

Earlier this weeek we mentioned a cool map mashup that our sister site Gothamist has. They have feeds for both the police and fire departments in New York City and it makes for a really cool and really useful little application, and it's something that we'd love to have on our site here. However, we've never had a police feed in Seattle and now we don't have access to the fire department's data either. The......

The Showbox had a fire this morning or last night or however you refer to the 5am hour and there's not a lot of information around right now (c'mon journalist types - we can't stand this suspense). Smoke was spotted coming from the building, sprinkler system engaged, FD arrived and extinguished something on the roof: that's about all that's out there at the moment. A spokesperson for the fire department said the fire originated on......

Over the weekend Seattlest visited Lincoln Park in West Seattle for the first time. At 135 acres, there was more ground to cover than we could manage after our picnic (there are five different picnic areas) -- so we decided on checking out the waterfront path. But there are three ballfields and two tennis courts, too, if you're into that kind of thing. It was on the waterfront path that we discovered what West......

The Ballard Library was evacuated today and searched by a haz-mat team after a librarian found something weird in the book drop that made her hands tingle. At first library personnel said it was a powder, but according to the Seattle fire department, it was a sticky substance. Sounds like Bengay or Icy Hot or something? That may make for a funny joke around the dorm room, but is not funny at all at a......

There's something about a good marina fire that gets Seattlest's attention like few massive insurance calamities can. This morning we were awakened by our crack team of Down South correspondants with the news that Harborview Marina in Gig Harbor was being consumed by fire. From the P-I: A fire boat was being dispatched from nearby Tacoma to aid the 40 local firefighters on sight. The fire was reported about 8:10 a.m. by a land dweller......

Hikers getting lost in the woods is an unfortunately frequent occurence here in the Pacific Northwest. Cell phones and hand-held GPS certainly help a lot of people out of jams, but Seattlest suspects that the increasing numbers of local hikers mean that there are more folks lost in the woods now than ever. One would think it would be difficult to get trapped in Discovery Park, though. Apparently, a man who was attempting to get......

Next time your bathtub BBQ goes awry the Seattle Fire Department is going to turn up at your door in spiffy new unis. Traditional black is back in vogue, replacing the tan uniforms worn by Seattle firefighters in recent years. The outfits will go above and beyond mere fashion, of course, and sport a number of technological improvements, including water-wicking inner liners and more water-resistant exteriors. The jackets are also made with a strap on......