Chimney service in Alki, Seattle

Alki's homes stand on a narrow shelf, and the ground behind many of them is among the least settled in Seattle. Since 1916 the Seattle Landslide Study has logged 106 slides in the strip it calls the Alki Avenue area; roughly one in three came off the upper bluff west of Sunset Avenue SW, and around 33 fell during the storm winter of 1996 and 1997. The study records more debris flows per acre here than anywhere else in the city, describes loose slope material as much as 50 to 60 feet thick on a midslope bench, and singles out houses at the bottom of the bluff as vulnerable simply for standing so near it. South of the point, around Boyd Place and Chilberg Place, the city built soldier-pile walls after a 1997 movement broke a water main.

Along the water the risk runs the other way. The same study found no documented high-bluff peel-off slides in West Seattle, because Alki Avenue SW and the other shoreline roads shield the foot of the slopes from waves, and Seattle Parks notes that a seawall protects part of Alki Beach Park.

For a homeowner below that bluff, the chimney works as an early warning. Brick and mortar cannot flex the way a wood frame does, so slow ground movement tends to appear as a stack leaning off true, a widening gap against the siding, or diagonal cracks stepping through the joints. When we visit an Alki house we look for all three and photograph them with the date. Explaining why the ground moved is work for a geotechnical engineer, and we refer it there.

When West Seattle's chimneys were counted after the earthquake of April 29, 1965, Alki was not in the counted blocks. HistoryLink's essay on that morning still has a line for it: nearly every chimney at Alki Beach was reported down. The same quake seriously damaged the 1913 brick section of Alki School, which was taken down that August, and a 60-foot stack fell onto the school's boiler room.

Geology helps explain why this end of the peninsula shakes the way it does. According to the Seattle Landslide Study, the peninsula sits on the south side of the Seattle Fault, so its bedrock is shallow, and that rock surfaces here and there on the shore by Alki Point and to the east of the light station. After the 2001 Nisqually quake, a block-by-block survey by Booth, Wells and Givler found Seattle's chimney damage tightly clustered, and West Seattle stood out most.

What that means for a house chimney is simple. Unreinforced brick that has been through 1949, 1965 and 2001 may carry cracks that no one has looked for, often inside the flue where only a camera can see them. We recommend an inspection after any earthquake you felt indoors, and before relighting a fireplace whose history is unknown.

Alki is one of the few places in Seattle where people burn wood outdoors on purpose. In 2026 Seattle Parks ran the beach fire season from May 22 to September 7: fires only in the pits provided, first come first served, clean bare dry cordwood and nothing else, put out with water by 10 p.m.

The pits answer to the same authority as your fireplace. When the regional Clean Air Agency calls an air quality ban, wood and charcoal fires outdoors are off along with the ones indoors, which is why the beach pits close. Inside the house, the first stage puts out wood-burning fireplaces together with uncertified stoves and inserts; at the next level the ban also sweeps in certified wood appliances and pellet stoves as well. A household may keep burning only with an exemption approved in advance, and the agency's test for one is strict: if another heat source can hold the living area at 70 degrees, three feet above the floor, the exemption does not apply. Even exempt homes may not produce visible smoke while a ban is on.

Bans arrive mostly in the colder months, when still air traps smoke near the ground, so check the agency's status before the first fire of a cold, calm evening.