By reporter Steven Smalley
Neighbors say a firework or “flare” sent aloft from Ella Bailey park started a fire in shrubbery adjacent to a Magnolia home at 24th Avenue West & Halladay Street Tuesday night. Local kids tell residents they saw the perpetrators shoot an incendiary from the park about 10 p.m. which traveled down hill in the direction of the fire.
When the blaze began, 77-year-old Ava Plechsmid was watching television. Then she smelled something. Looking out her upstairs window, she sees the flames.
“Oh my God! Oh my God, my house is on fire!” she screamed. “I was shaking,” she tells Magnolia Voice in an exclusive interview. Luckily only the shrubs caught fire. Seattle firefighters quickly extinguished the smokey blaze.
One neighbor across the street was equally worried because the wind and smoke was blowing her direction. The fact she has a cedar shake roof on her home did not slip her mind.
“It was blowing some embers onto my property,” she says. “The smoke was as high as you could see. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. You could hardly see. It was a huge red ball of fire. What was going through my mind? Get the hell out of the house.”
Other neighbors tell Magnolia Voice the Fire Department had the blaze out, “in about 10 minutes.”
An investigation is on-going.