Tukwila Apartment Fire Highlights Lack Of Sprinklers At Seattle Complexes

People are raising questions and concerns about the deadly fire at a Tukwila apartment building this week, and how the damage and loss could've been less, KING 5 reports.

“Why didn’t this building have fire sprinklers?” Tukwila Fire Chief Jay Wittwer asked about Maple Crest Apartments, which went up in flames early Tuesday morning (August 17). The blaze left three people, including a child, dead and dozens of residents displaced.

Firefighters are putting out the last few hot spots Wednesday morning (August 18), reporters said. Officials ordered evacuations on one street, fearing that the building may collapse from its now unstable hillside foundation.

Now that the fire has been contained, many have questions about how the fire got so bad in the first place.

For starters, Maple Crest reportedly didn't have any sprinklers.

"Since the complex was built in the early 60’s, building codes didn’t require the building to have any installed," KING 5 says. "But when the building codes were updated, the building wasn’t."

This isn't just a problem isolated to Tukwila. Wittner warned that "hundreds of occupancies throughout the Seattle area... are not sprinkled.”

“It is very, very expensive to place and have retrofit done to an existing building,” the fire chief explained. “So that changes the conditions of affordable housing on a property like this... Had there been sprinklers in this building, we have seen across the nation that with buildings that do have sprinklers, we have a different outcome.”

Reporters reached out to the owners of Maple Crest Apartments regarding the lack of sprinklers, but they were unavailable for comment.