Pang Fire: A Year Later -- Suspect Martin Pang Is In Jail In Brazil Awaiting Extradition, A Key Witness Against Him Has Fled, And Families Of The Four Firefighters Who Died (At Right) Are Weary Of Waiting For A Trial

A year after the deadliest fire in Seattle's history, the arson suspect is 7,000 miles away, the case is caught up in international politics, the city's Fire Department is fending off accusations of negligence.

And now comes another setback:

A key witness against Martin Pang - a former friend and roommate - has fled the state and said he won't testify.

He's angry at Bellevue Police over an unrelated misdemeanor case.

"I'm not interested in helping the state at all in any way, shape or form," said Kevin Hook, speaking to The Seattle Times by phone from an undisclosed location.

Hook's defection is the latest in what has been a year of unexpected difficulties and unanswered questions since the torching of Pang's parents' frozen-foods warehouse in Seattle's International District last Jan. 5.

Four Seattle firefighters - James Brown, Walter Kilgore, Gregory Shoemaker and Randy Terlicker - died battling the blaze when the floor they were on collapsed into the burning basement.

"So much has happened in a year, and yet it seems like it happened just a week ago," said Rise Liv Pang, the suspect's ex-wife, who had tipped authorities to the alleged arson plan. "Now it's the waiting that's the hardest part."

"Our lives have been totally affected this past year waiting for Martin Pang to be brought back to trial," said Mary Anne Kilgore, widow of the firefighter who led the attack inside the Pang building.

Pang has "had a direct impact on more people than he'll ever fathom, and I'm one of them," said Capt. Raymond Risdon, the head of the Seattle Fire Department's arson unit.

Risdon went on disability leave recently and will ask to be reassigned in part because of stress related to the fire.

Among others still wrestling with the case are a safety officer who retired in December after accusing his department of wrongdoing, an insurance agent who wonders why firefighters weren't told about the arson tip, and detectives who suffered the embarrassment of having the suspect flee to California and then to Brazil.

The families will have a private memorial service tomorrow at Station 13.

Next Wednesday, the department will bring in counselors to talk with firefighters about the deaths.

And unless Brazil's president or Supreme Court changes course, Pang will be extradited by mid-February. No trial date is set.

"Justice is just around the corner," Seattle Fire Chief Claude Harris said yesterday.

Pang wants to prove innocence

Pang, 40, said he is eager to come home, but only to prove his innocence. A failed businessman and struggling actor, Pang said he fled to Brazil to escape media scrutiny, not the police.

The decision might pay off. On Dec. 19, Brazil's Supreme Court said Pang can be tried only for one count of first-degree arson, not for murder, if he is extradited to the United States.

The arson charge carries a standard penalty of slightly more than two years in prison - "an outrage," said King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, who wants a life sentence for Pang.

Less than an hour after Pang was arrested in Brazil on March 19, he signed a confession for the FBI, saying he'd slipped in and out of Seattle on Jan. 5 to set the fire.

Later, his attorney, John Henry Browne, argued the confession was coerced and was false.

If the confession is not allowed in court, prosecutors apparently would be left with a case built largely on circumstantial evidence.

"Maleng took his best shot" in Brazil, Browne said. "He lost. Let's go to trial."

Hook has beef with police

The prosecutor's task became even harder Dec. 14, when Hook went into hiding because of a beef with Bellevue Police over the misdemeanor case filed against him in June.

Hook, 39, is one of nine people who have told authorities that Pang discussed with them his desire to set the fire before the place burned.

Hook's account is particularly important because Pang asked him personally in 1993 to set the fire, according to an affidavit submitted by King County to the Brazil Supreme Court.

Hook said he refused and told Pang he "didn't know of anybody that would do something that stupid."

Hook said in the telephone interview that Pang should face justice for arson, but "I now question the integrity of the system, and I don't think that Martin is going to get a fair trial, . . . as I haven't gotten a fair shake."

If the prosecutor's office issues a subpoena for Hook, Seattle Assistant Police Chief Jim Deschane said officers will make every effort to locate him.

Hook was arrested in June after confronting a policeman who had been called by Hook's girlfriend to stop a noisy party in the Crossroads area of Bellevue.

Hook felt the patrolman wasn't doing enough to stop the unruly partygoers, who he said had flashed guns and were using drugs.

Hook pleaded guilty to a disorderly-conduct charge.

Though the Bellevue prosecutor's office recommended no jail sentence, the Bellevue probation interviewer requested a 45-day jail term.

Before he could be sentenced, Hook fled. He cites two reasons: First, he said, a jail sentence would ruin his career as a pawnshop jeweler who must be bonded to work. Second, he's afraid of retaliation by Pang, who is a martial-arts expert.

"As soon as he gets extradited, my life is in peril," Hook said. "He's a very dangerous man. . . . I'm going to change my name. I'm actually going to leave the country because of this."

Living with the memories

Rise Pang, 35, the ex-wife who tipped authorities to the alleged arson plan, has found her fear of Pang, sorrow for the widows and dealings with prosecutors to be constant factors in her life the past year.

"Let's get the trial over with, and then we know the outcome, and we go on," she said. "It needs to come to an end, where I don't think about it every day any more."

At the time of the fire, she was office manager for Mary Pang Food Products Inc. She now works in a tuxedo-rental shop. She is raising her and Pang's daughter.

Rise Pang continually wonders why local and federal officials handled the arson tip the way they did. She had told them it was going to happen and they didn't stop it.

Unanswered questions

Afterward, she wore a hidden microphone and helped police build a case against Martin Pang, and they let him get away.

Insurance agent Tom Graves, who helped Rise Pang tip off the authorities, is haunted by the same questions.

"Why wasn't that information (from Rise Pang) relayed down to the firemen who fought that fire?" he said.

Rise Pang's tip was that the fire would be started in the basement of the Pang warehouse. But the officers who commanded the firefighting effort were not only unaware of that, they didn't even know the building had a basement until the floor collapsed.

The arson squad has been on the spot much of the past year; some blamed it for not preventing the fire.

Risdon, head of the arson squad for more than four years, said it was a matter of protecting the informant. "You are caught between a rock and hard spot," he said.

But Rise Pang said she was never even contacted again. She knew the arson plan was still alive.

She appreciated the confidentiality, but she would have handled it differently.

Risdon promises that important information will emerge at Pang's trial, information that will answer many questions about how the case was handled.

"At the time of trial, people will have a different picture of what transpired," he said.

Questions may never be resolved

Questions about how the department fought the fire might never be fully resolved.

In an investigation published in June, The Times detailed 23 major problems in the firefighting effort. Reports by the U.S. Fire Administration and the Fire Department detailed many of the same errors.

The main problem was communication. Apparently, only two firefighters realized the building had two levels, and the fire was raging directly below the floor where firefighters were working for half an hour.

Firefighters Collin Darrah and William Dennis, in statements recently released to The Times after a public-records lawsuit, said they tried to show a battalion chief the situation from the vantage point of their ladder on the back side of the building.

"There was an intense, probably confined fire directly under the main floor where the attack was taking place," Dennis wrote. ". . . I went down the ladder and had (Battalion Chief Steve) Brown climb the ladder to see what we had seen. It could not be seen from the top of the alley or any other vantage point to the best of my knowledge.

"(Brown) saw the fire along the entire length of the floor, but the report never went out over the air."

Brown saw situation differently

Brown has said he didn't see the situation the same as Darrah and Dennis did. He didn't realize there was a fire at a lower level than the one already being attacked, Brown said, and he'd been ordered to stay back.

Some fire officials say more people would have died if firefighters had attacked the blaze at its source.

They say the ceiling, propped by a frail "pony wall," would have fallen on perhaps 20 firefighters.

Others disagree.

"What it sums up to is a preventable tragedy," said former Fire Chief Gordon Vickery. "If you'd fought the fire properly, the pony wall wouldn't have made any difference because you'd have put the fire out."

Expect to hear more from Vickery and other outside experts if any survivors of the dead firefighters sue the city. And Browne is expected to seize on every Fire Department blunder in his defense of Pang.

Jones pursuing claim

Meanwhile, former Safety Chief Rodney Jones is pursuing a $1.75 million employment-discrimination claim against the city. He said he was forced out of his job because of his safety complaints.

Though the department recently offered Jones an apology and reinstatement, he declined.

He said the department did so only because the state Department of Labor and Industries has confirmed his complaints.

L&I fined the department $41,000 for its treatment of Jones and for other problems surrounding the Pang blaze. The department is appealing the fine.

Chief Harris said the Pang fire has changed his department forever.

The biggest change is in how fires are fought in unoccupied buildings: The department now takes a more defensive stance, staying outside as it did while fighting a vacant restaurant blaze on Western Avenue on Nov. 14.

The department also has bought new safety equipment, changed the way arson tips are handled, and given firefighters better training on structural hazards and radio procedures, he said. However, bigger-ticket items, such as manpower, remain unresolved.

A department task force examining the Pang fire recommended adding one firefighter to the current three-person engine crews, new aides for battalion chiefs, an additional arson investigator and more safety officers. But Harris said there's no budget for what could be as many as 22 more people.

When the department decided to increase the safety staff from one to five, cuts were made in operations.

"I don't know of any other way," Harris said.

Jon Gillis, president of the firefighters union, is considering a grievance or other legal action to prevent cutbacks in the number of firefighters.

"This falls short of the promise that was made after the Pang fire, the promise by the mayor and members of the City Council that they would take care of firefighters," Gillis said.

Arson squad needs resources

Risdon said the arson squad is particularly short of resources.

He has seven fire investigators to cover the city 365 days a year. He said he needs 12 but hasn't even been able to restore a position cut in 1991.

On the police side, the commander and detective-sergeant in charge of catching Pang have retired within the past year.

Police Capt. Larry Farrar said his only regret is not being on duty to book Pang for murder when he's returned from Brazil.

Police have never explained how Pang was able to escape Seattle on a train to Los Angeles, then to apply for and obtain a visa from the Brazilian consulate in Los Angeles, then to fly unimpeded to the South American country.

Two other people are particularly anxious to get on with the trial of Martin Pang: his parents, Harry and Mary Pang of Mercer Island, who had devoted their lives to the business allegedly destroyed by their son.

They continue to believe he is innocent, said attorney Browne.

"They're very tired by all this," he said. "They're anxious to get it moving along."

In the purported confession, Martin Pang said he set the fire because he wanted his aging parents to be able to stop working.

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THE PANG FIRE: ONE YEAR LATER.

MARTIN PANG Arson suspect remains in jail in Rio de Janeiro, where he's lived since March. He insists he's not guilty.

RISE PANG Former wife who tipped police to the suspect's alleged plan. She's "so mad about all the things that went wrong."

CLAUDE HARRIS Seattle fire chief survived the political heat that followed the fire, but there's been some shuffling in his department.

RODNEY JONES Safety officer who warned of problems with equipment and was removed from his position after the fire. He recently quit the department and plans to sue.

NORM MALENG King County prosecutor, also a candidate for governor, is pushing the Justice Department to try to lift restrictions on Pang's extradition.

MARY ANNE KILGORE Widow of the one of the four fallen firefighters. She says the families' lives have been consumed with waiting for Pang to be brought to justice.