A vacant Burlington apartment building with a troubled history caught fire early Friday morning, causing no injuries or deaths but inflicting enough damage to require demolition, officials said.
The fire at the King Street building was its second in just over a year. The previous blaze, in January 2021, killed two residents of the then-occupied building, 55-year-old Henry Burawa and 31-year-old Michael Loyer.
Officials said the cause of Friday’s fire is still under investigation. Last year’s fire occurred when a resident fell asleep while smoking and ignited nearby objects.
While no tenants have formally occupied 199 King St. since the 2021 fire, officials said the building had been broken into at least three times before Friday morning.
During check-ins on Aug. 13 and 17, and Dec. 10 of 2021, inspectors found that the same back entrance to the property had been forced open, said Bill Ward, the city’s director of permitting and inspections.
After each break-in was discovered, officials told Full Circle Property Management — which maintains the building — to more firmly secure that entrance. The company complied, and shored up the door with larger boards and bigger screws, he said.
The building was secure when an inspector last checked it on Jan. 28, a week before the fire, Ward told VTDigger.
Firefighters spotted the blaze at about 3:40 a.m., after leaving the nearby central fire station to respond to another call.
“When they pulled out, they could see the building on fire, and obviously sent all our available resources there,” said Burlington Fire Chief Steven Locke.
Crews from Colchester and South Burlington joined Burlington’s to battle the blaze amid wind, snow and frigid temperatures, Locke said.
“It just slows everything down,” Locke said of the conditions. He noted that some firefighting equipment froze during the operation.
The three-story building’s roofing materials were still smoldering as of midday Friday, Locke said, leading crews to remove part of the structure’s roof.
The building will need to be demolished because of the damage it sustained in the fire. The property is worth $560,200, according to the city’s property database.
The president of Full Circle, Stephanie Gilbert, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The building is owned by a trust named “Tintagel,” according to city and state records. Since 2020, the trust has sold off more than half a dozen properties it previously owned in the city, records show.
A message left for Lewis Sussman, a Burlington lawyer who represents the trust, was not answered.
In the years leading up to the 2021 fire, city inspectors had flagged the property for code violations such as broken front-door knobs and missing smoke alarms, according to city documents.
Yet Ward, the head of inspections, told VTDigger that, at the time of last year’s fire, none of the building’s problems posed a danger to residents.
Prior to the 2021 fire, the city had ordered those repairs to be completed by Feb. 1, 2021. But about three weeks before the deadline, the fire struck, and the building was not repaired between the 2021 and 2022 fires.
Former residents of 199 King St., which sits just above the intersection of King Street and South Winooski Avenue, said the building was not in good condition before the 2021 fire.
“Everything was just kind of a mess,” former resident Alden Bisson told VTDigger last year. “It looked like nothing had been upgraded or repaired in quite some time.”
