Jason Howard, a pharmacy technician at Northwest Portland’s Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center, overheard the news at work: A huge fire had engulfed a four-story apartment in the Goose Hollow neighborhood.
It wasn’t until later that the 52-year-old learned the four-alarm blaze had destroyed the 60-unit apartment building where he lived for 15 years.
“I’m still processing,” he said outside the scene at 1410 S.W. Taylor St., where 100 firefighters prepared for the building’s possible collapse Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear what caused the fire around 10 a.m., or how many people lived in the building, although rescuers said they felt “confident” all residents were safe. Late last year, city inspectors cited owners of the 1910 structure for hazardous conditions, but they had fixed a series of code violations, according to a city inspection Monday.
Smoke billowed from the structure for hours, and the temporary closure of Interstate 405 snarled traffic in and around downtown. Portland General Electric also turned off power to the area at the request of Portland Fire & Rescue affecting nearby schools such as Lincoln High.
Olga Shershneva lived in the building for five years. A 33-year-old yoga instructor, Shershneva was inside when she heard fire engines pulling up. She was loading her cat, Toby, into a crate when the fire alarm went off. That wasn’t unusual to hear; the fire alarm went off “at least once a week,” she said.
This time she opened her door to a wall of thick black smoke.
“I couldn’t see an inch in front of my face,” she said.
Once outside she said she watched all the windows on the top floor explode.
“I lost everything,” she said.
— Catalina Gaitán, cgaitan@oregonian.com, @catalingaitan_
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