The morning after the Harrington Square apartments burned to the foundation, smoke and flames still rose from the ruin.

“They were fighting hot spots all night long,” said Claude Holgren, who lives across the street.

Holgren saw smoke rise the from the building when he grabbed his neighbor to show him what was going on, he said.

A few minutes later he saw an explosion on one of the top floors, and within 20 minutes there were flames shooting about 60 feet into the air, he said.

The smoke could be seen from as far as Tacoma.

Debris eventually landed on a nearby real estate office, Northwest Properties USA, 900 Harrington Ave. N.E., and it was quickly consumed in flame, Holgren said.

“It was a goner when we got here,” fire Chief I. David Daniels said of the real estate office. “It’s not an issue of resources. It’s priorities … It’s more important to save these homes.”

Fire crews went defensive almost immediately to protect nearby homes from the intense heat of the fire.

The open construction of the five-story buildings made the fire burn hot, said Mark Peters, deputy chief of the Renton Fire Department.

“Standing here (across the street) was as hot as opening an oven after roasting a chicken,” Holgren said.

Investigators started their work Wednesday and they’re expected to finish Thursday.

Electrical work was installed in garages, but it hadn’t been installed on the upper floors where the fire reportedly started, said Carl Stephens, manager of Stephen’s Electric Company, which was installing electricity in all the buildings.

Evidences of the heat were seen by a scorched wooden fence from a single-family home across the street, but the homes were saved.

“There’s so much water they saturated into the building, it’s still dripping,” local Simon Nino said Wednesday morning.

The credit goes to the hard work and training of the fire crews, Peters said.

Property owners are assessing potential smoke damage to the north building. Smoke flooded the connected garage, where insulation in the ceiling appeared charred from the heat, but no fire was reported.

“We were going to give it over in two week,” Stephens said.

The building was expected to open to residents within a month.

“Poor people. They did all that work for nothing,” Nino said.