Chief Rick Marshall’s urgent warnings prior to 2020 hotel fire, “Let’s not confuse luck with fact”

A few weeks ago KIRO TV broke the story that King County is still paying $330,000 per month in taxpayer funds for the former Red Lion Hotel, which now sits empty with numerous broken windows and a fence around it. While it’s widely known that the hotel was bing operated as a homeless shelter and caught fire in December 2020, it’s less well known how hard Renton fire officials worked in the months before the fire to get correction of numerous safety violations in the building and warn the leadership of the Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC-the non-profit that was operating the shelter) and King County of the high fire safety risks.

At a July 20, 2020 meeting, five month before the fire, Renton Fire Chief Rick Marshall, reported serious fire concerns to a meeting attended by leaders from DESC and King County, along with several state legislators.  Written meeting minutes provide a shorthand summary of the fire chief’s report including: “let’s not confuse luck with fact.” He (Chief Marshall) pointed to anywhere from 230 to 300 people doubled up in rooms, …. pages and pages of fire infractions, chain-link fencing had been illegally put around the building at first (that ceased), locked exit door, piles of materials blocking exit corridors, tampering with alarm systems, water leaks, inoperable fire doors. He said trying to run this shelter out of the Red Lion is “putting a round peg in a square hole.”….I’m extremely frustrated. … I would say we have been getting lucky and I don’t want to keep betting on that.” He said he had dealt with 100+ calls the last four (4) months, has had to institute bi-weekly building inspections, and had to be at the Red Lion four separate times on one day.”  The meeting minutes including the list of attendees are available here.

I was personally a member of both Renton City Council and the Renton Fire Authority Board at the time, and it felt to me like the response to these warnings was more focused on criticizing Renton leaders than on pro-actively eliminating safety risks.

Fire officials were worried about doors chained shut. (Screenshot from Q13 report linked below, original source Renton Fire Authority)

Five months later one of the rooms of the hotel was set on fire, and dozens of firefighters responded from Renton and nearby departments to stop the blaze and help evacuate some residents on the upper floors who could not use stairs on their own.  The fire, smoke, and water damage to some rooms on the upper floors of the building was significant.

Fire officials were worried about sprinklers that were tampered with. (Screenshot from Q13 report linked above, original source Renton Fire Authority)

There is enormous public interest in what is next for this location.  The damaged building stands at the southwestern gateway to our city. Before the pandemic it provided important lodging for visiting guests and an excellent venue to host events and conventions, while it also served as a vital economic anchor to our Renton Village business district.   I’ve never had access to assess the damage first-hand so I can only estimate damage based on photos and second-hand reports. But with the fire and repeated flooding that occured in this building, along with continuous drug use and the other contamination, many parts of it would have to be torn down to the framing to get it clean enough to attract hotel guests again. Such a remodel could be considered a “substantial Improvement” affecting more than 50% of the building’s value, which would typically mean the entire building would have to be stepped up to all of the latest codes, including latest earthquake standards. This could make renovation financially infeasible, and result in the building needing to come down. Along with our fire officials, Mayor Pavone and several of us on Council tried repeatedly to warn King County that they were incurring a huge cost and putting the occupants, city and county at great risk when they went down this path. Now the County is paying four million dollars a year for an empty building, and they have effectively ruined a property that was assessed at 24 million dollars at the start of the pandemic. Renton Housing Authority potentially could have built beautiful permanent, enduring apartments for sixty to seventy families with all the money that the County poured into 24 months of temporary shelter in our once-beautiful Red Lion Hotel and Conference Center.