Staying with the story
The Springfield News-Sun first broke the news about the five-alarm fire as crews pulled up to the scene and has followed the story as fire marshals conducted their investigation. Go online to SpringfieldNewsSun.com to see exclusive video and pictures of the fire.
Scrappers are likely to blame for igniting the biggest blaze Springfield firefighters have battled in decades.
The Springfield Fire/Rescue Division investigation report will officially list the cause of the Tri-State Pallet warehouse fire — which began on the evening of Jan. 6 and burned for several days — as “undetermined,” Springfield Fire Marshal Brian Miller said.
But Miller interviewed dozens of witnesses, reviewed documents provided by the building’s sprinkler company and examined what evidence was left at the charred scene and concluded that the flames from the scrappers’ blowtorch sparked the fire that evening.
“I don’t know that they meant to cause a fire, but people helping themselves to some metal at the top of the ramp with a cutting torch is what caused it,” Miller said.
Criminal charges aren’t likely though, Miller said, because police may not have enough evidence to prosecute.
Flames at the warehouse, 270 Monroe St., reached more than 20 feet above the treeline and were fueled by thousands of wooden pallets stored in the warehouse complex, firefighters said.
The five-alarm fire was bigger in volume than the 1999 fire at the Crowell-Collier plant, Springfield Fire Chief Nick Heimlich said.
It took millions of gallons of water, dozens of firefighters and days of work to extinguish.
“There was a lot of money, time, effort and energy put into this fire,” Miller said.
The warehouse didn’t have all of the fire protection it could have had, he said, but there was a working sprinkler system.
“I don’t know that every single fire-protection feature that could have been maintained in this building was,” he said. “But I don’t think that it’s (the building owner’s fault) that his building burned.”
In his 23-year tenure as a firefighter, Miller said he has never seen such a massive fire that was sparked by illegal scrappers.
“It’s a sign of the times perhaps,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of vacant buildings in town that cause us a lot of issues. Arson fires, drugs, prostitution, theft.”
Ohio leads the nation as the state with the most insurance claims for metal thefts, according to National Insurance Crime Bureau.
Metal theft costs U.S. businesses $1 billion a year, according to U.S. Department of Energy estimates.
When the Springfield-News Sun reported on metal thefts last year, Tom Lagos, who owns the warehouse complex that housed the burned Tri-State buildings, said scrapping in the city is a problem.
“They’re brazen thieves,” Lagos said. “Police are doing what they can with the power that they have, but it’s a problem that really has to stop at the scrap yards.”
Scrappers will continue to illegally take scrap metal from across the city as long as prices for the goods stay up, police said.
Home and business owners should maintain a building’s fire safety features and keep properties secured from scrappers, Miller said.
“Fire protection is a serious thing that we only take seriously after a big fire,” he said.
Tri-State Pallet, which has its headquarters on Sherman Avenue, had troubles with vandals at the Monroe Street warehouse even before the fire, said Zeb Niles, operations manager with the company.
The complex had been broken in to after workers left their first-shift jobs, he said, and he wasn’t surprised scrappers targeted the warehouse.
The fire hasn’t hurt business, Niles said. Some of the inventory was lost in the fire, but the business has opened a new warehouse on Sherman Avenue.
The outcome could have been worse, he said, but he hopes the perpetrators have learned a lesson.
“I would hope that people would maybe stop and think about what they’re doing before they do it, because this cost people money and people could have lost their jobs,” Niles said.
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