A year has passed since a suspicious fire tore through a 19-unit apartment building at 516 Canal Street in San Rafael, killing two longtime residents, and investigators still have not named a suspect. The lot where the building once stood remains vacant, a stark and lingering reminder for a Canal neighborhood still processing the loss.
The two women who died in the August 21, 2025, fire were identified by the Marin County Coroner's Office as 62-year-old Tracey Lee Lowmiller and 68-year-old Pamela Lynn Scoggins, according to the City of San Rafael. As reported by CBS News, families of those who died have endured an agonizing wait for answers about the investigation into the blaze that gutted the apartment building.
Fire officials reclassified the cause of the fire from undetermined to suspicious after noting its unusually rapid burn rate, which prompted a joint arson investigation involving the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and accelerant-detection K9 units, per the same city update. Investigators analyzed burn patterns at the scene to determine whether the fire had an incendiary origin, but no suspect has been publicly named in the year since.
A Building That Had Just Passed Inspection
City records confirmed the 19-unit complex had passed its mandatory annual fire safety inspection in July 2025, just weeks before the fatal blaze, the city's update noted. San Rafael requires such inspections annually for all multi-family apartment buildings, making the fire's sudden and fast-moving nature all the more jarring for residents who believed the building was safe.
The fire displaced between 55 and 60 residents and destroyed all 19 units, according to the San Rafael Police Department. Several occupants were forced to jump from upper-story balconies to escape before emergency responders could open a shelter at the Albert J. Boro Community Center. Canal Alliance and other local agencies stepped in to help survivors secure interim hotel housing in the days that followed.
Most Displaced Families Found New Homes
By October 2025, city officials and community service organizations had rehoused 15 of the 19 displaced households, using housing vouchers and rental subsidies to secure long-term placements, according to the City of San Rafael. Organizations, including St. Vincent de Paul and Canal Alliance, led case management efforts to get families back into stable housing in a neighborhood where affordable units are already scarce.
One year on, the property itself remains an empty lot. The building's owner applied for a demolition permit in September 2025 to clear the gutted structure, a process that required a multi-departmental safety review because of the extent of the structural damage, per the city's update reported by CBS News. No redevelopment plans for the site have surfaced publicly since.
A Partner's Wait for Justice
Speaking on the one-year anniversary, the partner of victim Tracey Lowmiller told CBS News that Lowmiller had stayed behind at her apartment on the morning of the fire to care for a rescued cat. She died alongside two of her pets. Her partner has called for justice in the still-unsolved case, a plea that underscores how little has changed for grieving families even as the physical rebuilding process moves forward elsewhere.
Police have kept a dedicated ATF tip line, 1-888-ATF-FIRE, active alongside the digital ReportIt.com platform, specifically requesting photos or video footage taken between 5 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. on the morning of the fire, according to the San Rafael Police Department. Investigators have said that early-morning footage from residents or passersby could prove critical given how quickly the fire spread through the building.
Not the Neighborhood's First Arson Scare
The Canal neighborhood has faced arson concerns before. In May 2020, San Rafael police arrested a resident after a spree of six early-morning arson fires set across the neighborhood along Canal, Hoag, Mill, and Medway streets, including fires set in dumpsters and inside an occupied apartment building, the police department said at the time. That case, resolved with an arrest within days, stands in sharp contrast to the year-long silence surrounding the 516 Canal Street fire.
The tragedy has unfolded against a backdrop of intensifying housing pressure in the Canal neighborhood, one of Marin County's most densely populated and working-class communities. In December 2025, the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority approved a deal converting 60 units at the nearby Meridian apartment complex into deed-restricted affordable housing, capping annual rent increases at four percent, as Hoodline reported in its earlier coverage of the Canal rent-cap agreement. For a neighborhood already stretched thin on affordable housing, the loss of 19 more units to fire has only sharpened the stakes.
For now, the case remains open, the lot at 516 Canal Street remains empty, and the families of Tracey Lowmiller and Pamela Scoggins remain without the answers they have sought for a full year.
