SEQUIM — Routed tenants of the Grey Wolf River Apartments will have their final chance today to go back into their units to salvage and collect belongings left behind during a spectacular fire Wednesday.
The early morning fire destroyed 13 apartments and two storefront businesses on East Washington Street downtown.
Jim Bay, Sequim public works director and chief fire inspector, created the access window of 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the tenants after conferring with Josh Moreland, the complex’s owner, about noon Thursday.
According to Bay, once today’s 2 p.m. deadline passes, the building will be sealed and everything in it will remain until the structure at 140 E. Washington St. is demolished in the coming days.
The building will probably come down after Saturday’s Irrigation Festival Grand Parade, for which 30,000 people are expected to flood downtown Sequim.
“We have to make sure that the building is safe and secure before anyone comes back inside,” Bay said.
“We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Some units without floors
Only apartments deemed safe by Bay and a couple of his inspectors will be accessible to tenants during today’s six-hour window.
At least two second-floor units no longer have floors, and several others had walls or portions of the roof blown out by Wednesday’s fire.
Almost all apartments suffered varying degrees of water and smoke damage.
Bay said inspectors still suspect that the cause of Wednesday’s fire shortly after 6 a.m. was electrical wiring in a laundry room/utility area close to the center of the L-shaped building.
The fire brought an army of firefighting equipment from across the North Olympic Peninsula.
Eight fire engines and two ladder trucks responded from Sequim, Carlsborg, Port Angeles, Port Townsend and unincorporated Jefferson and Clallam counties.