A carrier for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer first spotted Thursday morning’s fire and called 9-1-1.
Simultaneously, some of the residents of Admiralty Condominiums in Port Ludlow were awakened by a car alarm and a loud explosion.
Shirley Kempken, who occupied a third-floor condo for more than a year, went to the garage under the condos and saw a burning car with its doors open.
“I screamed at my husband to get out,” she recalled, adding that she then alerted a neighbor who was older than 70.
All three left the burning building before emergency crews arrived.
Still shaken later Thursday, Kempken recalled the terrifying moments around 4:30 a.m.
“I heard a horn honking. Then I heard a POW! And I thought, ‘What the hell was that.”‘
“All I had was my bathrobe,” said Kempken’s husband, Hartmut.
“All my keys were up in the condo. We had a trip planned for Germany, but all our passports were burned.”
Peninsula Daily News carrier Leslie Holmes could see the glow of the blaze from the Port Ludlow Village Market, where she was delivering Thursday’s edition.
“I’ve never seen a fire so big — it was intense,” Holmes said.
“I was parked along Oak Bay Road after I delivered at the marina, maybe a couple of hundred feet from the fire, when I heard a lot of yelling to get out of there.
“Then the side of the building collapsed.”
