Fires and Squatters in Vacant Buildings: Protecting Empty Property in Seattle and Tacoma This Winter

1. An empty house on East 32nd, and a lot like it

The fire on East 32nd fits a pattern firefighters on both ends of I-5 know well. Building boarded up, nobody living there, at least officially. KOMO's report has crews attacking it from outside while they kept flames off the houses next door, and only moving inside once it was safe.

Seattle and it's fire department put numbers on the problem in April 2024, when Mayor Bruce Harrell asked for emergency powers over dangerous vacant buildings. According to the Seattle Fire Department, the city had 77 vacant building fires in 2021 and 130 in 2023. Three people died in vacant, dangerous building fires in 2023. A three-alarm fire at a vacant apartment building on First Hill in early 2024 took more than 100 firefighters.

Counts depend on who's counting. Seattle Fire data reported by KOMO in March 2025 put 2023 at 61 and 2024 at 51. Both sources agree on 91 for 2022, but the two counts doesn't agree on 2023, and we couldn't find an explanation. So treat 2023 as somewhere between 61 and 130 depending on definitions. Even the lower 2024 number works out to roughly one vacant building fire a week.

The legislation passed unanimously, and Harrell signed it on June 6, 2024. It lets the fire department order a dangerous vacant building fixed or torn down. If the owner won't do it, the city can do the work and put a lien on the property. Those demolitions cost $350,000 to $500,000 per building, KOMO reported at the time. By the department's 2025 annual report, 62 buildings were brought into compliance that year, 38 demolished and 24 restored.

Fires kept happening anyway. The same report lists a two-alarm defensive fire in a vacant Northgate apartment building on September 6, 2025. Citywide, its investigators looked at more than 280 incidents in 2025 and ruled 125 of them intentionally set. And empty buildings rarely stay empty. On August 6, 2026, Seattle police answering a trespass call at a house in the 4400 block of 8th Avenue NE, a property that had sat empty for years, removed 14 people and arrested five. Officers seized four rifles along with stolen e-bikes.

2. Why empty buildings burn

Nationally the picture is the same, only bigger. The National Fire Protection Association's 2018 report Fires in Vacant Buildings estimated that U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 30,200 vacant building fires a year in 2011-2015. Those fires caused an average of 60 civilian deaths and $710 million in direct property damage per year. Half were intentionally set, compared with 10% of structure fires overall, and an estimated 3,310 firefighters a year were injured at them (NFPA figures, summarized by the North Carolina Department of Insurance).

Arson is only part of it. When Seattle asked for its demolition powers, city officials explained that "without access to safe heating sources, unauthorized occupants have been known to set unsafe fires for warmth inside," as The Urbanist reported. That's why the next few months matter. Somebody sleeping inside a boarded house in January is going to try to stay warm, and the building usually has no heat and alot of dry junk lying around. People with nowhere warm to go end up in these places, and the building can turn into a trap for them and for the firefighters who go in after them.

Securing the building does help. An earlier NFPA study covering 2003-2006 found that 57% of fires in unsecured vacant buildings were intentionally set, against 31% in buildings that had been secured. The same report made a point every owner should sit with for a minute: "Often these fires have time to grow before they are discovered and reported" (NFPA release, 2009).

Inside, it gets worse. Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins said that when buildings stay derelict, firefighters "often observe holes in the floor, missing stairwells, structural instability, and other hazardous conditions." That's why so many of these get fought from outside, the way Tacoma crews started on East 32nd. By the time a building is being fought from the street, there usually isn't much left to save.

3. What local codes expect from owners

Seattle. The Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) wants a vacant building kept "secured from unauthorized entry" and out of the weather, with grounds kept clear of junk and overgrown brush (SDCI vacant buildings page, SMC 22.206.200). A building lands in the Vacant Building Monitoring Program after a complaint, including one from SPD or SFD, or simply because the property is in the development process. Developers, take note: if you bought an old house to tear down for townhomes, you may already be in it. Once in, the city inspects every month and charges $271.85 to $542.60 per month for it, depending on condition. Violations start at $150 a day. You get out after three clean monthly inspections in a row. If the city ends up boarding or demolishing the building itself, it bills the owner and can put a lien on the property.

Tacoma. The city handles derelict and substandard buildings through code compliance under its Minimum Building and Structures Code, TMC chapter 2.01. Neighbors report open or derelict buildings through TacomaFirst 311, and the Code Compliance team takes it from there. Tacoma's alarm rules matter for vacant property too, more on that in section 7.

Pierce County. The county's vacant property maintenance page reads like a list of what goes wrong when nobody's watching: trash and junk vehicles, overgrown vegetation, unsecured structures, graffiti, trespassing and even tree theft. Under Pierce County Code chapter 17C.80, an owner whose building is boarded up for future repair has to follow an approved property maintenance plan for the whole time it's boarded, including periodic inspection by the owner or the owner's agent. Boarding generally can't last more than a year without the building official's approval.

Statewide. Washington adopts the International Fire Code as its state fire code. Its vacant premises section (311.2.1) says openings "shall be boarded, locked, blocked or otherwise protected to prevent entry by unauthorized individuals." In other words, an open building is a code problem before it's anything else.

4. Squatters: what Washington law lets you do

Since 2017 Washington has had a faster route than eviction for people who were never tenants. Under RCW 9A.52.105, the owner or an authorized agent signs a declaration under penalty of perjury, on the form set out in RCW 9A.52.115. A peace officer can then remove the people, with or without arrest, and order them to stay off the premises or face arrest for criminal trespass. Among other things, the declaration has to state:

• the occupants aren't tenants and haven't been tenants, or homeowners on title, at the property within the last twelve months
• you demanded that they leave and they didn't
• the premises were not abandoned when they entered
• the premises weren't open to the public at that time

You also acknowledge that a person removed this way can sue you for damages and attorney fees if anything in the declaration is false.

Two catches. The statute ties the officer's arrest authority to buildings that count as residential real property, so a vacant warehouse or old storefront usually means an ordinary criminal trespass call instead. And the officer must give the occupants a reasonable chance to show evidence that they're lawfully there, as tenants or guests, and has to consider it. An occupant waving a lease, real or not, can slow everything down.

Now read that "not abandoned" line again. It's the reason dated inspection photos and recorded video matter so much on an empty property. They show the place was being kept up and watched, and they can show when somebody got in. If the person turns out to be a former tenant, this route is closed and you're into an eviction, which is a job for your attorney.

Lawmakers have talked about going further. SB 5250, "Improving legal processes to deter squatters," was referred to the Senate Law & Justice Committee in January 2025 and retained there for the 2026 session without moving. For now the 2017 law is the tool you have.

5. The insurance clause most owners forget

This one costs real money. Commercial property policies built on the standard ISO form carry a vacancy condition. If the building has been vacant for more than 60 consecutive days before a loss, the insurer won't pay for any of these, even when they'd otherwise be covered (Adjusters International):

• vandalism
• sprinkler leakage
• building glass breakage
• water damage
• theft or attempted theft

For everything else, fire included, the payment drops by 15%. So vandalism and theft, the two things most likely to happen to an empty building, are exactly what you can loose coverage for first.

"Vacant" is also defined tighter than people expect. For an owner, a building counts as vacant unless at least 31% of its total square footage is rented and used for the tenant's customary operations, or used by the owner for its own. A strip center that's down to one small tenant can qualify.

Washington courts enforce these clauses as written. In Lui v. Essex Insurance Co. (2016), the owners evicted their tenant and didn't tell the insurer the building was empty. A sprinkler pipe froze and burst. Essex paid $293,598.05 before learning the building had been unoccupied for almost 60 days, then denied further coverage, because the policy's vacancy endorsement limited covered causes of loss from the first day of vacancy. The Washington Supreme Court ruled for the insurer, unanimously (Cozen O'Connor summary).

So call your agent the week building empties out. Ask whether the policy has a vacancy clause and how it defines vacant. Then ask what security the carrier wants to see, and read for a protective safeguards endorsement, since those can make coverage depend on things like a working alarm. A vacancy permit endorsement or a separate vacant-building policy may be worth pricing too. Then winterize the plumbing or keep enough heat on. A frozen pipe in December is the kind of claim that sinks you.

6. A first-month plan for an empty building

Most of this costs little. The point is to do it in the first few weeks, before day 60 and before the building gets a reputation on the street.

That last item is the one people skip. Plywood and a padlock definately slow people down. They don't tell you anything.

7. Where cameras help on a vacant property, and where they don't

The gap on a vacant property is time. NFPA's line about fires having time to grow describes it exactly. Nobody's home to notice the first night somebody pries a sheet loose, so by the time a neighbor calls 911 about smoke, a trespass has already turned into a fire.

Most vacant buildings add one more problem: the power is off, or about to be. A solar trailer doesn't need it. Ours run on solar panels and a battery bank, with an optional backup generator for long stretches of winter overcast, and they connect over 4G/5G cellular with automatic failover. Nothing gets wired into building you might be demolishing next spring. Our power system page covers how that holds up through a Puget Sound December.

When somebody walks the back of an empty building at 2 a.m., the AI alerts flag a person on camera and push a notification with a severity level. Whoever is watching pulls up the live view. From there the options are simple. Optional LED floodlights and a warning through the optional PA speaker send most people back over the fence. If they stay, you call 911 and describe what you're watching.

That matters more now than it used to. Since October 1, 2024, Seattle police respond to alarm-company calls only with supporting evidence such as video or an eyewitness, and sensor activations alone don't qualify. Tacoma requires alarm companies to verify before calling police, unless live video or audio shows a crime in progress. We went through both policies in our Washington security camera laws guide, along with what you can and can't do with audio.

The recording does a second job. By default the trailer's recorder keeps two weeks of motion-only history on a rolling loop, and frames are watermarked and encrypted. On a vacant property that recording is your proof the place was watched and kept up, and it can show the date somebody first got in. That's the kind of question both the squatter declaration and an insurance adjuster will raise. Export clips the morning after anything happens, though, because the archive loops.

A few setup lessons from empty buildings

• Park at a corner, on the diagonal, so one mast sees two sides. A long building may need a second trailer or a camera aimed down the far wall.
• Watch the approaches people really use. On most vacant houses that's the alley and the back door. A front porch facing a busy street gets less traffic than you'd think.
• Set PTZ presets so the cameras sweep your building and leave neighbors' windows and yards out of it.
• Keep the trailer visible from the street. Half the value is somebody deciding to try a different building.

Where cameras don't help is inside. A trailer watches the outside of the building and the lot around it. If people are already living inside, the camera documents it, but getting them out is the RCW 9A.52.105 process or an eviction. That's why the first weeks matter so much. Most of the time their is nobody watching an empty building during exactly the hours that count.

On cost: for a building that'll sit empty for a few months while permits or a sale work through, a monthly rental usually makes the most sense. Our standard monthly rate runs $8,000 to $10,000 depending on setup, with delivery and setup included within 30 miles of Tacoma (see pricing). Weigh that against a fire claim cut by 15% after day 60, or a city-ordered demolition billed back to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

An empty building in Seattle or Tacoma can go wrong a few different ways, and nearly all of them start the same: somebody gets in, and nobody knows for a while. The fire department will notice eventually, and so will your insurer. Close the building up properly and tell your agent before day 60. Clear out the junk. Keep dated records. Then make sure you're the first one to know when someone gets in, long before anyone dials 911 about smoke.

If you've got a vacant house or commercial building in Pierce, King, Snohomish or Kitsap County and want a second set of eyes on it, we're glad to walk it with you and tell you straight whether a trailer fits. Get in touch or call us at (253) 683-2288. We cover Tacoma and Seattle and everything in between.