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Photo from Lady P of The Picaroon
There is a terrible fire in downtown Renton tonight. Over 100 fire-fighters are battling the blaze. King5 News has the story with video here
And Renton Blogger Lady P has close-in pictures and a first-hand report at her blog entry HERE
This is a sad night. This is a popular building, that was enjoying a renaissance of popular new businesses. The Common Ground Cafe was emerging as a popular hang-out for many (I just had coffee there on Sunday with a dozen friends), the Comic Den is a downtown institution, and several other popular businesses as well as residential apartments were impacted.
Mayor Law is on site, and I’ll post his comments when we get them.
The only good news of the evening is that so far it appears that no one was hurt.
Photo from the The Seattle Times
Now we know why the building owner wouldn’t maintain it. No sense of putting money into something that will burn.
The fire-sprinkler code really needs to be relaxed: You can’t install and decent sprinkler system, it has to be an expensive and perfect system. The cost requirements thus it puts the cost out of reach for a lot of buildings that could use it but are hard to retrofit.
OH NO! I was looking forward to a cupcake when I got back into the country!!! T_T
Oh no! This building had some great little businesses. What is being done about the building just to the west of Common Grounds? That one is in bad shape.
That’s terrible! At least no one got hurt — that’s a good part.
I wonder if Common Ground will get re-open. I sure hope so. It is such a nice place!
Randy, keep us posted if you get any more information.
This really sucks! It’s not like a Target that burned down and the corportate office will put things back; Not only do small-business owners depend on their business for income, but they often put a bit of their soul into it too.
This is from one of the comments at the Seattle Times website:
“The fire burned for several hours, appeared under control and then erupted into a much larger fire, and damaged the whold block of buildings.”
Interesting, but don’t know it’s veracity.
Can we blame Bush for this?
RB is right about small business getting hurt hard in a tragedy like this.
Came down Renton Hill this morning (about 5:30 AM) and could still smell the heavy air from the fire.
Can we blame Bush that the fire re-erupted? Thankfully the basement was made of stone material so it could stop the fire from burning.