EVERETT — The coffee stand was on fire, and the door was locked from inside with a deadbolt.
The barista couldn’t reach the key. Eight seconds after the explosion, she climbed out the window. It was too late. Courtney Campbell, 26, had burns to 90 percent of her body. She died four days later at the hospital.
Campbell had recently opened her own bikini barista stand, Sinners and Saints Coffee, along Everett Mall Way. An investigation by the Everett Fire Department found the explosion was caused when propane leaking from a portable heater ignited in the stand. Hours earlier a customer had complained to her about the propane odor.
On the night of the fire, Jan. 7, it was 39 degrees outside.
On Thursday, the state Department of Labor and Industries issued a new report on the death, highlighting the dangers of using heaters and propane in small work spaces. The report is meant to help businesses prevent similar tragedies “from ever happening again,” agency spokeswoman Elaine Fischer said. The Everett Fire Department this week also made public new details about how the stand’s construction contributed to the death.
The coffee stand was made from a prefabricated shed. It was about 10-by-10 feet in size and in the style of a barn. The previous owner, Bill Wheeler Jr., reportedly had made modifications to the shed in violation of city codes, city records show. The deadbolt on the stand’s lone door was one of those modifications.
Wheeler was convicted in 2014 of sexually exploiting a 16-year-old girl who worked in one of his bikini stands. He started his sentence in state prison earlier this year.
The shed, which was worth about $25,000, was co-insured by Campbell and Wheeler, city records show. She had not yet obtained her own business license. Campbell’s family told investigators she had a contract to make payments on the stand over time, starting in March 2015. She had told others she was almost done with the payments.
Wheeler is not expected to face sanctions over the shed modifications, officials said.
The coffee stand had not been inspected by the city fire marshal’s office since Campbell took over ownership. The inspection was scheduled later that month and would have included any heating sources. The deadbolt would have been considered a “violation of building and fire codes,” L&I found.
“The lock modification was done in between inspection rotations,” Everett city spokeswoman Meghan Pembroke said Friday. “If the modification was caught, fire officials would have required it to be removed immediately.”
The L&I report cited the shed’s modification as a factor in the death, as well as the storage and use of multiple propane containers inside.
Investigators found that Campbell was using a 20-pound propane cylinder, the kind used to fuel barbecues, to refill smaller canisters to feed the space heater. The smaller canisters were supposed to be one-time use and were not safe for refills, the L&I report says. The larger cylinder was leaking.
The extra propane also was stored too close to the heater and should have been kept outdoors, investigators found. The cause of the propane leak was unclear, but may have been due to a poorly fitted adapter.
A customer told investigators he had smelled propane coming from inside the stand about 9 that morning. He said Campbell showed him the heater and he told her that the propane odor was dangerous. She reportedly told him she had no other way to keep warm in lingerie during her long workdays.
The fire was reported not long before 5 p.m. Sections of the stand’s roof and siding were blown out, along with the windows. Police found Campbell inside the gas station that shared a lot with her stand. She was severely burned but still conscious. On the way to the hospital, she told medics about the propane and the deadbolt. The key, which was hung on the wall, was too close to the fire for her to reach, she said.
Everett fire investigator Barry Pomeroy found that “any occupant would have no chance of obtaining a key and operating a keyed locking deadbolt to escape under direct flame contact.”
After the death, city inspectors visited nearly two dozen drive-through coffee stands in Everett. All of the stands were using electrical heating, the L&I report says.
Campbell went to high school in Kent and aspired to a career in modeling, according to her obituary. Her family on Friday asked for privacy as they are caring for her two children.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com; @rikkiking.
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