A Graham fire official says two fires in less than a week prove that houses built closely together need sprinklers and other measures. Pierce County Council officials will revisit the issue next month.
• Pierce County changed rules in ’06 for special projects

The fire burned quickly through one house, then another. Within an hour it had destroyed two homes on March 14 and damaged three more in the Graham-Frederickson area.

Another fire burned Thursday in a nearby Graham neighborhood, affecting two more homes.

The pair of incidents, five days apart, brought some of Gary Franz’s greatest fears to life.

Franz, the deputy fire chief at Graham Fire and Rescue, has fought for years against regulations that allow houses to be built shoulder to shoulder without special fire safety measures.

Now some council members say it’s time to review the issue, which is welcome news to Franz.

“The County Council is in a unique position to adopt code changes that would have prevented or seriously reduced the outcome we had here several days ago,” he said.

The homes damaged in the March 14 blaze were zoned to be 10 feet apart.

But even that requirement wasn’t enough to keep the fire in one home from jumping to another house directly beside it. Firefighters later discovered that the house where the fire originated was built too large for its lot; the actual distance between it and its neighbors was five feet instead of 10.

Both houses affected in Thursday’s blaze were also permitted to be 10 feet apart.

Investigators declared both fires to be accidental.

Franz said this week that the fires demonstrate the danger of building homes too close together without adding safety measures, such as fire-resistant siding or sprinklers.

Current state and county building regulations require only houses fewer than six feet apart to meet those standards.

Franz said he wants to see the County Council require fire-resistant building materials on homes separated by fewer than 10 feet.

He said the house that started the March 14 chain-reaction fire should serve as a warning.

“This fire would not have been as significant nor as widespread if the houses were farther apart and were made of more fire-resistant materials,” Franz said.

The council will revive the discussion on April 6, when the Community Development Committee holds a study session to discuss Franz’s concerns.

Councilman Terry Lee, who chairs the committee, said the March 14 Frederickson area fire was the main reason for scheduling the study session.

“We’re going to try to understand a little more about how this happened,” Lee, R-Gig Harbor, said Wednesday. “Then we’re probably going to have a wider discussion about whether these minimum side yard setbacks are adequate.”

Council Chairman Roger Bush said he finds it interesting that the buildings damaged in the March 14 fire actually exceeded state and local building standards.

“We have neighborhoods that are in even worse shape than this,” said Bush, R-Graham. “We can explore whether we need to have a new and modified standard.”

If the council does want to change the minimum setbacks for new housing developments, it could be done in the form of a zoning change, said county building official Gordon Aleshire. That’s the approach the council took when it enacted additional controls in 2006.

Any change the council makes wouldn’t affect existing developments.

Aleshire said officials have felt some pressure under the state’s landmark 1990 anti-sprawl legislation to allow more tightly packed developments.

“The Growth Management Act encourages density, so you don’t have to have your infrastructure spread all over the place,” Aleshire said.

Densely built housing areas also reduce stormwater runoff, said Mitchell Brells, development engineering manager for the county.

“I think there are enough complicated issues around this that it isn’t a quick thing to fix, if it needs fixing,” Aleshire said.

Tiffany Speir, government affairs director for the Master Builders Association of Pierce County, said she doesn’t think an incident like the five-house fire near Frederickson should prompt the county to overhaul its regulations.

“We certainly have sympathies for the people who lost their homes in this fire,” Speir said Thursday. “We think more focus should be placed on the cause of this fire. It’s unlikely these events will repeat themselves in the same way.”

The March 14 fire started in a metal trash can on a back porch. Fire officials said the owner lit a fire to generate warmth and then left it unattended.

Investigators traced Thursday’s fire back to a pan left on a hot stove, Franz said.

Some residents who live near the site of the five-house fire said they hadn’t seen the proximity of their homes as an issue – until now.

“We were all in danger,” said Cathy Schifferdecker, who lives next door to one of the houses damaged on March 14. “When it’s close to you and the house right behind you is totally engulfed in flames, it’s scary. If the wind would have blown the other direction, it would have been us.”

Franz said another problem posed by densely built neighborhoods is that fire crews may have their access to burning homes impeded. Firefighters need space to open their ladders and angle them to access the upper floors of buildings.

Some neighborhoods also have narrow roads that can hinder fire engines from reaching the site of an emergency, he said.

Franz said he’s glad the County Council will review his concerns in light of the damage that occurred in his district twice in a six-day period.

“The fire that we actually think will be the really bad one hasn’t occurred yet,” Franz said. “We’ve just gotten a glimpse of what the sad results could be.”

Melissa Santos: 253-552-7058