On December 22nd fire ripped through an apartment building in Curlew, Washington which killed three people and left a fourth hospitalized with severe burns. Although the investigation is still ongoing the family of those victims blames the building's owner for the fire, and is threatening to sue.

The issue is simple: Sometimes tenants would use ovens to heat their apartments. And fire investigators say their preliminary findings indicate it was a burner left on overnight that caused this deadly blaze.

Despite complaints from tenants, the building's owner, Joseph Abraham, says there was no problem with the heat in the buildings.

"Most of the time when people had trouble with the heaters they had boxes in front of the heaters, on top of the heaters," Abraham said.

Abraham says he knew people were using ovens to heat their apartments.

?I have a lot of documentation telling those people not to do that," he said.

Abraham says he tried to get them to stop using the ovens and stoves to heat their apartments. He wrote letters threatening to evict people who used their ovens and ranges to keep warm. And he says the heat in his building worked just fine.

Over and over again Abraham's building passed inspections by the Ferry County Housing Authority. Some of those inspections were less than a month before the fires. The Housing Authority said the heating was beyond adequate and worked well.

But all of that talk about whether the heating worked or didn't talk doesn't bring back the two girls and their grandmother who were killed in the fire.

"Its been hard on the whole family," says Sheryl Brown, the step-granddaughter of the girls killed in the fire. "Our babies are gone ... the babies and a dear friend."