Silverado tenant says deadly explosion at Salt Lake City apartment building was ‘preventable’

Boarded up, fenced off and blackened with soot, the historic Silverado apartments still stand in downtown Salt Lake City, months after they ignited in a Memorial Day explosion.

For former tenant G.T. Esplin, the brick building is a constant reminder of the fatal fire he called a “preventable tragedy.”

“We just knew it was going to happen,” he said.

The May 30 blaze started on a first-floor balcony and spread up the front of the building to two upper levels, displacing everyone living inside the Silverado’s 13 units, according to an investigative report.

One person was killed in the fire, and another later died of his injuries in a hospital. Another tenant who survived was severely burned, and three firefighters were injured.

The fire’s aftermath brought its own troubles. Several tenants said their apartments were looted in the days that followed. A tenant said he blames the landlord for apparently not taking action after he and others reported a resident for smoking in his apartment, near home oxygen tanks, which investigators later determined triggered the blaze.

In the investigative report about the tragedy, a man named David is identified as the property owner, as well as the companies Daisymax Silverado LLC and DSK Capital LLC. In state business records, David Kottler is listed as the owner of the companies. He declined to comment for this story.

‘I had to get out’

A self-described night owl, 46-year-old Erica Larabee was in bed but still awake around 2 a.m. on Memorial Day when she heard a muffled fire alarm start ringing. She thought the sound was coming from the building next door.

“Aw, poor guys,” she thought to herself. “They’re going to have to evacuate at this hour.”

But then a boom startled Larabee out of bed, moments before she heard someone yell “FIRE!”

“I whipped around to look at my front door and saw smoke coming in,” said Larabee, who lived on the second floor. “That was when I knew this was real, it was in my building, and I had to get out.”

Esplin, 44, who lived on the floor above Larabee, slept through the alarms after working a double shift at a nearby restaurant. What did wake him was another tenant banging on his front door.

When Esplin opened it, he was met with a wall of smoke and “intense” heat. He escaped out his apartment’s back entrance and down a flight of wooden spiral stairs to the parking lot. He realized too late that he hadn’t grabbed his cellphone or even his glasses.

It was “some night,” Esplin said.

Several 911 calls obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune illustrate the frantic situation.

“Tell me what to do,” wails a woman who identifies herself only as Donna, as she asks a 911 dispatcher how she should leave the burning building. Screaming and crying, she’s finally able to escape. Many of the 911 calls were from people who reported seeing flames from across the street.

Larabee said it struck her how loud the fire was.

“I’ve been around a few small fires, campfire or fireplace size, in my life, so I knew that there was a sound to fire,” she said. “But I’d never experienced it on this scale.”

A dangerous combination

The fire started on a tenant’s balcony, when the man lit a cigarette too close to his oxygen tank, according to the investigative report. The open flame caused the supplemental oxygen to ignite, and the flames overcame the man and began to spread.

Residents said they heard explosions as the building burned, and the report described them as the sound of the man’s many oxygen tanks exploding. Investigators found multiple tanks inside his unit, as well as on his balcony.

One explosion was so powerful that his metal balcony door was ripped off its hinges and blown back about 15 feet, mangled and torn, the report states.

The fire appeared to be accidental, according to the report, which states that the man frequently smoked on his patio while using oxygen. The night of the fire, several tenants told Salt Lake City police that they had repeatedly warned the man not to mix the two, the report states.

The man died in the blaze. Efforts to reach his family for this story were unsuccessful.

Esplin told The Tribune that he and other tenants had often complained to landlord David Kottler about the tenant’s inclination to smoke while using oxygen, but Esplin said to his knowledge, nothing came of it.

Attorney Jonathan Schofield is representing several former tenants of the Silverado, although no civil litigation has been filed.

“If it turns out that the defendants were negligent and that they knew or should have known of the conditions that caused the fire, and didn’t exercise their duty appropriately to take action that would’ve protected others,” Schofield said, “they’ll be liable for the damages that people have suffered.”

Dealing with ‘nightly’ break-ins

After the fire, the property owner hired restoration company Paul Davis to secure the building and the tenants’ possessions.

Larabee said her apartment of 15 years had only sustained smoke damage, so she didn’t think she’d lose any of her stuff. She talked with a representative from Paul Davis, who told her the company would pack her things, clean them and store them in accordance with her renters insurance, and move them into her new place, she said.

“I thought it was great at that point and a huge stress off my shoulders,” Larabee said. She went to her apartment twice to grab a few changes of clothes and other essentials, then left the rest to Paul Davis, she said.

In a letter sent to Esplin, which he provided to the Tribune, Paul Davis also advised tenants not to move the bulk of their items, citing guidance from the insurance company and noting “Paul Davis will complete this for you.”

When Larabee returned to her apartment in the summer, she was dismayed to discover “a lot” of her stuff was gone, including a set of clothing hangers that her grandfather had decorated by hand with yarn. She believes her missing items were thrown out by the restoration company, but James McDougal with Paul Davis told The Tribune it would be against company policy for employees to throw away items without an owner’s permission.

McDougal said the break-ins that the restoration company has seen at the Silverado amount to “probably one of the worst cases we’ve seen on the buildings we’ve dealt with.”

Paul Davis fenced off the property a few days after the fire and boarded up most of the windows and doors. But break-ins were still a “nightly” occurrence, McDougal said. Someone also spray-painted the words “drug house” on the back of the building.

To combat the break-ins, Paul Davis requested extra patrols from Salt Lake City police and hired a private security company to conduct drive-by checks of the building. But they kept happening.

McDougal said the company had to screw the Silverado’s doors shut at one point instead of using nails, because people had popped the nails out. One person even tore siding off the building and entered through a wall. Sometimes, people just broke the doors down.

“[They] destroyed locks, they destroyed doors, you name it,” McDougal said.

Esplin said he lost a bass guitar worth about $10,000 to the break-ins. “I don’t want to hold a lot of hate my heart,” he said. “But I just feel like, holy smokes, they should’ve let us go in there and get our stuff.”

The smoke clears

Despite the destruction, Esplin said he’s going to bounce back. “All that I lost in books, instruments, TV, PlayStation, bed, clothes, kitchen supplies and computer is nothing compared to Dave Richards,” a friend who was badly burned in the fire and later died.

Larabee said she never liked her Silverado apartment, but had lived there because she couldn’t afford rent elsewhere. Now, she has a new place that she loves.

“I actually came to be more optimistic through all of this,” Esplin said. “Together we can get through anything.”

A GoFundMe campaign organized to help former Silverado tenants had raised about $3,350 as of last week.