Tears were shed Sunday by some of the people happy to be alive. They were at Lake Burien Presbyterian Church - a temporary shelter for more than 40 people displaced in an early morning apartment fire.

Two men and a child died in the fire, which destroyed most of the eight-unit Tara Apartments and badly damaged the eight-unit Jenny Marie Apartments next door, both in the 400 block of Burien's Southwest 155th Street.

Arson investigators were on the fire scene Sunday. As word spread through the Red Cross shelter that the blaze might have been deliberately set, tempers flared.

"If they ever catch the person who did this, I'll be in court every day," said John Baggott, whose roommate was killed.

He sat in a church patio wearing the pajamas he was sleeping in when the fire started, and a white button-down shirt given to him by a neighbor he hadn't met.

Baggott remembered having a cigarette with one of men killed in the fire when they met taking out their garbage. The man told him of his childhood in Mexico and often wore a smile, Baggott said.

Baggott and his wife, Jill, said they escaped as their main floor apartment filled with black smoke.

Shanell Rose, 31, lived with four others on the floor above the Baggotts. She shares her story of survival here:

As Rose finished telling her story, a cell phone call came saying two of her cats were found alive on her burnt apartment balcony. She gathered friends to go to retrieve the cats.