By Nick Gibson, Beth Nakamura, Gosia Wozniacka
oregonlive.com
PORTLAND, Ore. — Dozens of firefighters Wednesday morning battled a four-alarm fire at an abandoned Northeast Portland building that once housed a Kmart.
Crews arrived at Northeast 122nd Avenue and Sandy Boulevard at around 6:30 a.m. to find “heavy fire” in the building, the Portland Fire Bureau said.
The fire bureau expressed “concerns of embers landing in the neighborhood and beginning spot fires.” Huge columns of smoke billowed across the neighborhood as firefighters attacked the fire, and ash floated across streets blocks from the blaze.
Firefighters circled the neighborhood looking for “active embers” to ensure no additional fires started.
Large chunks of ash littered the yard of 67-year-old Laurel McAfee’s home, who said she’s lived in the neighborhood behind the abandoned Kmart since 2004.
“Look, you can see the different layers,” McAfee said as she picked up a piece of ash the size of a Post-it Note and held it up to the sunlight. “I don’t know if it was the roofing or the plastic on the roofing.”
McAfee said she heard a loud “boom” early in the morning, went to her kitchen window and saw traffic backed up outside her home on Northeast 125th Place. She smelled smoke but thought it might be coming from the large paper-mill fire in Longview, Washington, that she had been smelling since last night.
”I thought maybe a car had hit a building or something,” McAfee said. “It was that loud.”
She left her house, walking toward Sandy Boulevard, and saw a large plume of smoke, she said. That was when she figured it was probably the derelict Kmart building on fire.
Minutes later McAfee received an emergency notification from Multnomah County and multiple messages from her fellow Homeowners Association members that confirmed her suspicions.
”It was bizarre,” McAfee said. “Well, it’s not bizarre because that thing has been a friggin’ eyesore.”
— Portland Fire & Rescue (@PDXFire) July 19, 2023
People frequently camped inside the building, McAfee said, so she is not surprised it caught fire. She said she is grateful a fire station is nearby and that firefighters there responded quickly before the apartment buildings and houses surrounding the structure were threatened.
The property line of the Hidden Oaks Apartments is about 15 feet from the east side of the building.
McAfee said she has no idea how she will clean up the chunks of ash that covered her property. Ash also was spread out across the yards and roofs of apartment complexes and other houses nearby.
“There’s just ash everywhere,” McAfee said. “Reminds me of the Fourth of July.”
Firefighters also weren’t surprised Wednesday morning to discover the former Kmart building was ablaze.
“We know this structure,” which sits across the street from Parkrose High School’s sports fields, Portland Fire Bureau spokesperson Rick Graves told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
He added: “We’ve known this has been vacant for some time … [with] people gaining occupancy and using it as their home.”
Over the past few months, the site has generated several complaints from neighbors over the building being accessible and attracting homeless people, trash and debris. The last complaint, on July 6, led to a city inspection, which is still in progress.
At this time it is not known if anyone was trapped inside the building when the fire started Wednesday morning. There are no known injuries.
Water supply was a “major challenge” in fighting the fire, with few hydrants close to the structure, Graves said.
The blaze was brought under control relatively quickly, but firefighters expect to be on site all day.
The former Kmart building shuttered nearly five years ago. In its place, the San Francisco-based developer Prologis plans to build a massive concrete freight warehouse. Clean-air advocates, school officials and some neighbors have organized to stop the proposed warehouse from being built, saying it will bring significantly more pollution to the low-income community.
But city officials have said the proposed warehouse – 244,000 square feet, above average for large warehouses – meets all development standards, and that the city must follow city zoning code. The property is zoned light industrial.
The demolition permit for the building still hasn’t been issued. It has been in “approved to issue” status – ready to issue – at least since last November. Prologis has not paid the final permit fees.
Public records show the warehouse property is leased to Prologis by RFC Joint Venture, part of the New Jersey development company Garden Homes, which is owned by the wealthy Wilf family. Prologis is in control of the building process.
The fire did not impact the summer-school program at Parkrose High School.
The cause of Wednesday’s fire is not yet known. An investigation into the blaze has begun, and the fire bureau asks anyone who has information to call 503-823-FIRE.
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