About 40 people displaced after fire breaks out in Unity Commons apartment
Correction: Thirty-eight people in a ground floor shelter were displaced by water damage following an early Tuesday morning fire in a second-floor apartment at Unity Commons in Olympia. Although displaced, they were not taken to a nearby daytime shelter called Sergio’s, but were accommodated within the shelter itself.
An overnight fire at an area homeless shelter and supportive housing site and the resulting water damage displaced about 40 people, the deputy chief for the Olympia Fire Department said Tuesday.
About 1:15 a.m. Tuesday, Olympia fire crews were dispatched to a commercial structure fire at Unity Commons, a five-story residential structure at 161 Pattison St. NE.
Deputy Fire Chief Mike Buchanan said the alarm and fire sprinkler systems worked as designed, limiting the fire to the second-floor apartment. Fire crews then contained and extinguished the blaze.
The fire was started by “combustible materials too close to a heater,” he said.
No one was injured in the fire, Buchanan said.
Unity Commons has 65 permanent supportive housing units for those who were previously homeless and are now rent-paying tenants. It is operated by the Low Income Housing Institute. The 58-bed, 24/7 enhanced shelter on the ground floor is operated by Interfaith Works.
Interfaith Works Executive Director Meg Martin clarified Wednesday that although 38 people were displaced by water damage, none of them were displaced to Sergio’s, a daytime shelter near Martin Way and Lilly Road.
She believes that following the fire there were conversations about doing that, but ultimately the shelter was able to accommodate everyone, including in the common spaces of the shelter, Martin said.
“We did not have to move people out of the building,” she said.
This story was originally published August 6, 2024 at 10:39 AM.
