Huge Portland RV fire destroys vehicle, damages business on SE Division

An explosive fire in an RV where people had lived for years on Southeast Division Street sent a column of black smoke into the Portland sky Friday afternoon and blew out windows in the business where the vehicle was parked.

Four days later, no information was available from Portland Fire & Rescue about the cause of the fire. “Two displaced occupants are being assisted by the Red Cross,” an agency spokesperson wrote in an email Tuesday. “One cat is missing.”

A single engine was dispatched to the fire at 4:20 p.m. Friday, Portland Fire & Rescue spokesperson Rick Graves wrote in an email. The RV caught fire as some people were starting their evening commute on bikes, cars and the nearby MAX Orange Line. The block of Division Street between Southeast 8th and 9th avenues, just east of OMSI, was also busy with runners and other people at the time.

The owners of the mechanic shop where the RV was parked, Laurance and Sandra Seet, had been asking the couple living in the motor home to leave for a while, Sandra Seet told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Tuesday.

Sandra Seet, 83, said her husband, Laurance Seet, 82, initially gave the couple permission to park their RV on the property of their business, Standard Electric Motor Service. Parking an RV on private property is a way for inhabitants to avoid the vehicle getting towed.

Recently, the Seets asked the couple to move their RV. “We asked them several times,” Sandra Seet said. “He kept saying, ‘We’re going to leave, we’re going to get a different vehicle.’ He was hoping to get paid for some of the help he had done for my husband.”

Now, with the couple who lived in the RV nowhere to be found, Sandra Seet said she did not know how she and her husband would get the burned out vehicle removed. “We’re hoping it’s going to be towed away and I don’t know how, because we can’t afford it,” she said.

Sandra Seet said she and her husband have owned their business for nearly 70 years and break-ins, graffiti and other issues — recently, people started camping on the flat roof — became a problem in the last decade.

Barry King lives nearby and said he walked over to the mechanic shop after seeing smoke in the sky. He heard sirens from a fire engine, which was coming from a station just minutes away, and he started recording videos of the blaze on his phone.

King said there has recently been a noticeable decrease in RVs with people living in them in the area. “People look at the RV burning and some people jump to the conclusion” about what caused it, King said. “I don’t jump to any conclusions. I like to ask questions. And the question is, how did the fire start?”

It’s a question that might go unanswered. Graves said no investigator has been assigned to the incident.