Shawn Slater and his fiancee grabbed their cats and bolted outside, a fire was burning in the laundry room right next door to their apartment.

"My fiancee whose pregnant, she smacked me and woke me up and said 'you're not dreaming we've gotta get out of here!'" said Slater.

Within minutes, firefighters were on the scene. "It took them about 5 minutes to knock the laundry room door down and when they did it was just billowing smoke," he remembered.

The arsons all started in laundry rooms at the Park Ridge Apartments.

Warren Burns, Everett Fire Marshall, explained how firefighters quickly realized they had trouble on their hands. "As the crews were demobilizing and taking lines apart and getting ready to return to the station, we received a call of a subsequent fire in the same complex and within minutes we had third, fourth, and fifth fires reported."

In all, 22 different laundry rooms were torched using debris, even clothes, sitting nearby.

People who live in the complex couldn't figure out where the smoke was coming from.

"I could smell the smoke and I could see the smoke but we didn't actually see flames," said Joseph Tan.

Hie neighbor George Perkins went through the same thing. "Yeah, I've got a 6-day-old baby, that's why I was worried because it was like hey, what's that smoke?"

At this point, police don't think the fires are linked to any of the other arsons in Everett this summer, but they aren't ruling anything out .

"A total of 22 fires is not a common thing in one location. This could have very easily gotten out of hand and caused a great deal of loss of life," said Sgt. Boyd Bryant with the Everett Police Department.

Luckily none of the apartments caught fire and no one was hurt, but that's little comfort to the people who call this complex home.

"They're gonna set the fire in my laundry room," said Darla Wait, "whose to say they're not gonna set the fire on my back porch or anywhere else?"

Slater is angry. "They just ran out lighting fires as they went. Those people deserve to be caught and put away, they're sick. Something's wrong with them to try and hard innocent people while they are sleeping."

Police are following up on several leads. They are also hoping someone who lives in the complex might have noticed something suspicious or out of pace that could provide them with more clues. So far there are no arrests.