Giovanni Di Quattro, owner of the Rainbow Café, watched nervously as firefighters battled the three-alarm fire billowing out of the Heritage Building at 134 E. Main St., late Tuesday afternoon, just east of his restaurant.
It was one of his cooks who discovered the fire, which ignited in a laundry room of the two-story building.
“I just hope they can keep the fire from spreading,” Di Quattro said.
Eric Robertson, Valley Regional Fire Authority administrator, said: “We’ve been told that it started as a dryer fire. They’ve put an immense amount of water on it to put it out. And as you can see … they’re trying to ensure it doesn’t spread to the next building.”
The 21,000-square-foot, historic Auburn Heritage Building, constructed in 1921, according to the King County Assessor’s Office., is of mixed use, part residential, with apartments and commercial spaces but it was burning east, west, front and center. The building housed 35 residential units and 12 businesses.