Exclusive | Fire gutted a historic Richland house 9 months ago. Why is it still standing?

The once striking white house on a prominent corner in central Richland has stood vacant for years.

Weeds emerge unchecked from barren ground. Old cars that long ago met their demise litter the rainbow-shaped driveway.

Last July, two days before America’s birthday, those problems were compounded by a two-alarm fire that ravaged the home.

Once the overgrown, dry grasses in the yard ignited, the “Alphabet” house became a tinderbox.

Neighbors told police they’d heard fireworks popping in the area.

Fire investigators have never been able to confirm what sparked the blaze. But they know the flames that spread quickly — from an outdoor shed and playhouse to the real house — were fueled by the accumulated garbage and debris strewn across the property.

“The home was clearly a significant hoarder home, both inside and outside, which created a large fuel load creating a significant rate of spread,” officials wrote in city documents.

The Thayer Drive house in an historic neighborhood already was mired in controversy with the city of Richland, key in a $14 million federal lawsuit filed by the owner.

Now, the fire-gutted wreck is racking up thousands of dollars in fines for old and new code violations, but red tape may be stopping officials from taking more drastic action.

Doors and windows are not boarded over, and a gaping charred hole remains in the middle of the roof.

The owner has yet to clean up the property and repair the uninhabitable house, or to tear it down.

A rape survivor who was pregnant when she was attacked by a stranger in the home decades ago, she has said she suffers from mental health issues that cause difficulty in even the simplest activities.

“We’ve been trying to get the owner to come into voluntary compliance and the owner is refusing to do so,” said Richland police Sgt. Shawn Swanson, who supervises the city’s Nuisance Control Unit.

A Tri-City Herald investigation into the neighborhood blight found a complicated history that continues to unravel.

City’s top problem

Richland city officials admit 1344 Thayer Drive is the Code Enforcement Board’s top problem in the city. But little can be done about it — at least at the moment. Although the city is taking legal steps.

Images of the home before the fire, both online at Google Earth and in the fire investigation report, show a backyard littered with trash.

Neighbors and passers-by have filed complaints and vented on Facebook. Code enforcement officials have repeatedly levied fines.

Yet, the home — deemed a “total loss” in fire reports — sits vacant and mostly unchanged since the day it burned more than nine months ago.

No one was home at the time of the fire, and a neighbor told the Herald in July that they believe it had been vacant for at least four years.

“We didn’t know for years if someone lived there or not,” Tara Mendoza, another neighbor, recently told the Herald. “My husband would swear he’d seen someone through the window, but I wondered how they were OK living there.”

Fire investigation documents state that no water or power had been connected to the house for nearly two decades — since 2003.

The homeowner bought the property in 1988, but the Herald could not confirm when she moved out.

Her name is being withheld by the Herald because of the long-ago sexual assault that led to the admitted attacker’s civil commitment.

Multiple attempts to reach the woman were not successful. She transferred the home in 2014 to Live Victoriously Ministries, which she directs, according to the home’s deed.

The Herald did not find any record of Live Victoriously Ministries being registered with the Secretary of State as either a charity or business.

Unsecured property

Neighbors complain about the eyesore and worry about children playing in the area.

The Mendoza family rents a home next door.

She said it was just after midnight nine months ago when she awoke to flames outside her bedroom window.

She and her husband rushed to get their two young kids and an aging parent with dementia out of their house. Two older children were away visiting their grandma.

They forgot the family dog in the rush to get to safety, but a firefighter was able to retrieve the pet.

Five windows were blown out of the burning house by the heat of the flames, which also scorched the siding on the Mendozas’ home. A transformer also blew and electrical lines burned.

The Mendozas were forced to move out and live with family for two months until electrical repairs were done. But still, the ravaged house next door went untouched.

Middle-of-the-night rape

Problems at the Thayer Drive home began years before it was consumed by fire.

In 1995, the homeowner answered the door in the middle of night to a man who said he had an emergency and needed to use the phone.

She was five months pregnant at the time.

Once inside, he put the woman in a choke hold and raped her. He then fled and wasn’t caught until five years later.

The man was undergoing psychiatric care in the Tri-Cities in 2000 when he called police to tell them he had raped a woman in Richland. The details he provided matched the unsolved case.

He later was acquitted of second-degree rape by reason of insanity and confined to a psychiatric hospital.

“I have a longstanding sleep deprivation because I can’t fully allow myself to relax. I can’t fully get back to where I was,” the homeowner said in a statement to the Superior Court in 2016 when the rapist’s privileges were being considered.

He remains locked up.

Woman seeks restitution

Documents the Herald obtained show that starting in May 2016, the owner was notified by code enforcement about violations of overgrown weeds, grass and shrubs and a broken-down vehicle being stored in the driveway.

Those records going back five years are the most code enforcement documents the city has posted online.

Another letter was sent in August of the same year putting her on notice that the property still was in violation and a hearing was scheduled. She failed to appear and the board voted to table the discussion.

More than a year later, she was again in violation for the same issues.

In October 2017, city records show the homeowner was fined $200 for failing to cut overgrown vegetation and remove or fix a broken down car. She was fined another $100 more a month until violations were fixed with a December deadline.

Six months later, the homeowner filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the city of Richland, seeking restitution from Crime Victims Compensation on behalf of herself, her baby who had died two months after he was born and a living adult son.

“It would be justice well served if the state of Washington would award to the victims of (the rapist) an amount equivalent to the entire cost the state of Washington has provided for his care and treatment, along with punitive damages, to address the immense losses these victims have suffered unjustly,” she wrote in the civil action.

“Or perhaps the equivalent cost of the new (Duportail Street) bridge that Richland is building; as a gesture of building bridges between crime victim survivors and justice!”

The suit was dismissed in July 2018 because no further action was taken on the case and Richland officials were never served.

But by that December, a 6-foot fence was put up around her corner lot, including around the front driveway, in violation of city regulations.

Richland’s code enforcement officer sent a notice to the homeowner that the fence needed to be removed to be in compliance.

A follow-up letter was sent in February 2019 with a March deadline. When nothing was done, the Code Enforcement Board issued a $150 fine with $100 more each month until the violation was fixed.

Another lawsuit

While ignoring notices to care for her property, the homeowner went back to federal court with another lawsuit — this time for $14 million — against the city of Richland, the Code Enforcement Board, the police department, then-Mayor Bob Thompson and then-City Manager Cindy Reents.

She claimed in the suit that she put up the fence mostly because of a poor response by Richland police when major crimes were committed against her, her family and the property.

The filing says the city was not consistent in enforcing codes that were unconstitutional and illegal in the first place.

It also says the city discriminated against the homeowner and did not provide mental care care for her adult son while in the custody of Richland police. The attack on her two decades earlier exacerbated her son’s mental health issues, and left her with mental and physical disabilities, she said.

The owner, who filed the complaint without the help of a lawyer, wrote that she suffers intellectual, emotional, and mental deficits that affect every element of daily living.

The lawsuit was dismissed at the request of city officials in March 2020. The homeowner appealed in April 2020 and asked for a court-appointed attorney.

Federal court records show no action on the case since last July, when a federal judge ruled that her appeal was timely filed despite a delay in the court receiving the paperwork because of the COVID pandemic closures. The woman has yet to get a lawyer.

“It is extremely rare — pretty much unheard of — that in civil cases an attorney gets appointed,” said Joel Comfort, a lawyer with Miller, Mertens & Comfort who is representing the city.

Comfort said the civil case remains in a holding pattern.

Code enforcement

Three months after the appeal was filed, the blaze swept through the Thayer property and destroyed the home.

Firefighters had to knock down the fence to keep the flames from spreading, and focused on preventing neighboring homes from catching fire.

In the months since, few, if any, repairs have been made, say neighbors. A woman, believed to be the homeowner, has been seen periodically at the home sorting through the charred rubble.

Code Enforcement Board meetings were canceled between April and September last year because of the COVID virus. After they resumed, the board notified the owner in November of unsafe conditions and violations left by the fire.

A December deadline was to given to make the repairs that include boarding up windows and doors and removing burned debris, garbage outside the home and two inoperable cars.

The board fined the homeowner $500 in December after none of the repairs were made, with an additional $100 a month until done. It also said abatement efforts could begin Jan. 10 but any further action appears to have stalled.

Records obtained by the Herald show the homeowner owes at least $2,290 for violations dating back to late 2016. It’s unclear if any fines have been paid, but the total includes numerous overdue fees.

Benton County property records show $2,234 in 2020 property taxes were paid.

What is being done?

Residents have noticed and have vented on Facebook groups — angry that it appears the absentee owner has made no effort to fix hazards and that it appears the city isn’t doing anything to enforce the law.

“We have to exhaust all efforts and the fines keep piling up,” Sgt. Swanson told the Herald. “The complaints aren’t falling on deaf ears.”

One neighbor told the Herald that she won’t her children go into her yard without shoes because of the metal and garbage that flies their direction during windstorms.

But it isn’t the debris that is Mendoza’s biggest concern. In fact, she says she has a huge heart for someone living with a hoarding condition. Her worry is about the trespassers they’ve seen poking around.

She and her husband no longer are comfortable letting one of their teens watch the younger siblings while the adults are out shopping for fear of who is milling around the abandoned property.

Mendoza told the Herald that she understands that it takes time for cities to resolve issues such as this — but others remain frustrated.

“I don’t care what anyone does inside their home. I very much care when their yard is a fire hazard and vermin refuge, and when it brings down the appearance of the whole block,” someone wrote in a Richland residents’ Facebook group about the house.

The two-story Richland “A” home was built as a duplex in 1944 by the federal government for Hanford employees working on the Manhattan Project. The houses were given ABC letters depending on their shape and size.

Each side originally had three bedrooms and one bath, but it is now listed with the Benton County Assessor’s office as 2,466-square foot home with six bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and an unfinished basement.

The fire report also shows that the house was insured at the time. Documents on whether a claim was filed with the insurance company are not public record.

A Richland spokesperson told the Herald that the city attorney’s office was notified that the January deadline to fix the problems at the home had passed.

“The city attorney will now work with an outside law firm to obtain the warrant of abatement,” Hollie Logan, communications manager told the Herald.

She said that the warrant will allow the city or contractors to take actions that may include boarding up the house or tearing it down and clearing away the debris.

Logan said that while the city makes every attempt to be judicious when considering the use of taxpayer dollars, the city attorney now is taking action because the condition of the home and the property is detrimental to the general health, safety and welfare of the community.

But the process is expected take several more months, and the costs will be recovered through a lien against the property. The property and the home had a taxable value of $165,900 last year.

Richland municipal codes show that a judgment in favor of the city could ultimately result in the property being sold to pay off the lien.

“We understand this can be considered a long process, however we must follow the code and procedures currently in place,” Logan said.