A fire damaged the former home of Queen Sheba restaurant and bar Tuesday afternoon on Capitol Hill.
Firefighters responded around 2:50 p.m. to flames on the first-floor exterior of the forest green three-story house at East John Street and Broadway, where the main tenant was a neighborhood fixture for Ethiopian food for 20-plus years.
As of 3 p.m., the fire was under control, though crews were checking how badly flames scorched the building, according to a Seattle Fire Department post on X.
Firefighters smashed the front window of the former Queen Sheba building. The fire charred the west outer wall, and residents of the brick apartment building next door evacuated.
Crews shut down a nearby stretch of East John Street.
King County Metro said in a transit alert shortly before 3 p.m. that riders should expect significant delays on routes 8, 9, 11, 43, 49 and 60 due to the fire response.
The Ethiopian restaurant had closed in September, and the 125-year-old building sustained a “stubborn basement fire” about a month later on a Saturday afternoon, according to Capitol Hill Seattle Blog.
Finn Rossie, a resident of the evacuated building, said she and her girlfriend first noticed the smell of smoke from their top-floor apartment and saw a “thick wall of gray and white” outside.
Thinking the fire could’ve been coming from a downstairs unit, they pulled the fire alarm and shouted, “Fire!” as they ran through the smoke-filled hallway.
Resident Hannah Diocares said she smelled the smoke and got a text from her friend around 2:45 p.m., with a photo showing a plume visible from Cal Anderson Park.
“There was a huge dumpster fire,” Diocares said.
She was in the middle of building furniture in her apartment when she heard the fire alarm.
“I smelled the smoke in the hallway … I heard the alarm and everyone was yelling ‘Fire!’” Smoke “was going up the building” and flames lashed both buildings in the alley.
“I was really scared that there was a fire right there and we wouldn’t be able to leave, so I got most of my stuff,” said Robert Saunders, who also evacuated from the apartment.
No injuries were reported. The cause of the fire was under investigation.