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General News: Human Error Likely Cause of Mill St. Fire
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| Firefighters trying to extinguish the blaze where it started on the roof of a rear warehouse. |
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| After the fire only rubble remained of the warehouse where the fire started in the roof/ceiling. |
February 01, 2012
By Nancy Peckenham
Two weeks after the fire at 2 Mill Street, Cornwall police chief Todd Hazard says that his investigation is finding that human error, not criminal activity, led to the blaze that destroyed multiple buildings at the 69-acre Cornwall Industrial Park. The fire that is being called the biggest in Orange County history took more than 24 hours to bring under control by firefighters from 18 companies under the command of the Cornwall Fire Department.
After interviewing witnesses and examining evidence found at the scene, Chief Hazard said that it appears that a spark from a large “demo” saw used on the roof of a warehouse the day before the fire may have in lodged in the roof, smoldering overnight until it ignited a fire the next morning.
The investigation, which Chief Hazard is conducting with the help of the FBI, is still open. Evidence from the fire scene was described in the report of the Orange County Fire Investigation Unit released earlier this week. It says that investigators found a pile of one-inch pieces of steel L-beam on the ground near the warehouse where the fire began. The pieces appeared freshly cut and matched saw marks on a 100-foot-long steel L-beam lying on top of debris inside the warehouse. Piles of opened cardboard boxes on pallets also filled the warehouse that had been occupied by Superior Pack Group until September 2011. That company moved out after being flooded in August and left behind tons of debris.
The Orange County Fire Investigation Unit’s report concludes that the fire started in the ceiling/roof of the Superior Pack Group’s warehouse, but it doesn’t say what ignited the blaze.
Orange County Deputy Fire Commissioner John Horan said that the roof was so thoroughly destroyed in the fire that the exact cause of ignition is virtually impossible to identify. He did suggest that the scavenging of metal from the warehouse could have played a role.
The property manager of the Cornwall Industrial Park, Joe Longabardi, said after the fire that he had been told that two adults, a man and woman, had been trying to remove scrap metal from the property just before the fire broke out. Police chief Hazard said he interviewed the couple who explained they had been removing a tank that was 75 feet away from the warehouse.
Criminal charges could be filed if people were trespassing on the property without permission. That would be up to the property owner, Isaac Landau, who Chief Hazard said has been cooperating fully with his investigation since the beginning.
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