Firefighters were called for the second time in two days to the site of a two-alarm warehouse fire that originally started Tuesday in the 200 block of Adams Street in downtown Olympia. Fire broke out around 2:33 a.m. Wednesday in an inaccessible corner of the burned building. A hot spot in the southwest corner of the warehouse was hidden underneath a pile of debris, Deputy Fire Chief Gregory Wright said. The debris pile caused significant runoff, which blocked water from reaching the hot spot Tuesday morning.
“When there is a big pile of burn material and water can’t infiltrate it, then it can get hot enough to turn into flames,” Wright said. “It’s always possible and that’s why we checked it multiple times yesterday.”
The inside of the warehouse was too unstable for investigators to go inside Tuesday, but it was checked throughout the day. The warehouse was last checked at 10 p.m., but the hot spot was invisible and continued to heat up.