In a video that Andrew Kim sent KIRO7, you can hear someone saying, “You can feel the heat from here,” about a block away.
“They were both pretty heavily involved by the time we got here. There were flames through the roof,” said Leslie Hynes of the South County Fire Department. A neighbor told KIRO7 she saw smoke coming out the house further north first. Then flames erupted.
“Smoke and then flames, really, really quickly. I mean like all of a sudden. It took the firefighters six minutes to get here, that's a rough estimate, and the other house was on fire,” said Lauren Tourtellot, who lives down the street.
She said two of her friends ran through the homes to make sure no one was inside while she alerted neighbors.
“I was pounding, I was yelling at them, and I'm like, ‘You need to get out of your house! You need to get out of your house!’” Tourtellot said.
She said some neighbors tried to use a hose on the flames but it was no match.
“It’s like you can't stop it. You just watch everything burn,” Tourtellot said.