A five-acre brush fire that swept through a Lakewood mobile home park in August, killing two men, started from a fire pit on an adjacent and vacant property, according to a recently filed lawsuit that accuses the property’s owner of failing to take proper care of the land.
The lawsuit was filed by three married couples and a man who lived at the resident-owned Jamestown Estates mobile home park. They allege that VGU Washington Estates, LLC, did nothing to control vegetation on its parcel near the homes, didn’t inspect it for safety hazards and didn’t secure the property, leaving it accessible to people experiencing homelessness.
Efforts to reach a representative of VGU Washington Estates, using contact information gathered from public records, were not successful.
Lakewood police Sgt. Charles Porche, whose department led the investigation into the fire, told The News Tribune on Wednesday that it appeared it had been intentionally set by transients. Porche said the blaze was ignited during a dispute of some kind and hadn’t been meant to burn the mobile home park.
Porche couldn’t immediately confirm whether the blaze started from a fire pit or in proximity, and he said that authorities were still seeking people involved in the incident to help identify a suspect.
On Aug. 4, the wind-pushed fire burned through the 40-home Jamestown Estates, destroying nine homes and killing 70-year-old Patrick Zmiarovich and 31-year-old Zackery McDonough . It displaced 23 people, including nine children.
The seven plaintiffs in the suit, filed April 9 in Pierce County Superior Court, were residents of the mobile home park whose properties were either destroyed or badly damaged, and a few of the plaintiffs suffered smoke inhalation-related injuries due to their proximity to the blaze, according to their attorney Ashton Dennis.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, investigators hadn’t determined a cause . Dennis told The News Tribune on Tuesday that investigators later officially indicated — as the lawsuit lays out — that the incident originated adjacent to the mobile home park from a fire pit on the parcel at 7210 146th St. SW. He said his clients saw the fire begin from the area.
The lawsuit, which is seeking unspecified damages and legal fees, alleges that issues at the parcel near the mobile home park had been brewing since no later than September 2021. People lived on the vacant property at least part time, vehicles were parked, debris piled up and vegetation grew to taller than 15 inches — exceeding the limit set forth by city code , according to the legal complaint.
In July, a month before the deadly fire, a blaze started by people living on the property had to be extinguished by the fire department, the complaint said.
“You don’t get to own property and land and allow very readily observable hazards (to) persist, and do nothing about it, and be exempt from liability,” Dennis said, adding that his clients lost everything to no fault of their own.
“The fact that this could have been prevented makes it all the more troubling,” he said.
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