Firefighters knocked down a blaze on the 1400 block of Logan Street in Centralia on July 16.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CENTRALIA – Authorities have failed to find a cause for last month’s daytime fire that destroyed a vacant house on Logan Street, but the blaze remains in the suspicious file as far as police are concerned.
“We have an origin point, but we don’t have a cause for the fire as of right now,” fire investigator Rick Mack said today. “We’ll leave it undetermined. That leaves the door open in case we get more information.”
Mack, assistant chief and fire marshal for Riverside Fire Authority, said they completed their forensic examination and there was no evidence sent off to be tested.
“We’re hoping to get more information from anyone who saw anything,” Mack said.
Firefighters responded about 4:15 p.m. on July 16 to reports of a fully involved structure fire in a residential neighborhood at the north end of town.
Burning was a one and a half-story wood-frame home built around the turn of the century. The blaze extended to a detached garage in back.
Investigators concluded the fire originated inside the back portion of the house, Mack said.
According to Mack, some of the circumstances that make it feel odd are the lack of what commonly causes house fires: There was nobody living there who had a cooking accident, for example, he said. And it couldn’t have been an electrical problem because the power had been turned off a some point prior.
“Whether there was somebody who was in the residence doing something they didn’t intend to happen, I don’t know,” he said.
Exactly how long the home had been vacant or even who owns it isn’t clear.
Centralia Police Department detective Sgt. Pat Fitzgerald said police had contact in April with tenants living there.
County records show the owner as Dan Henderson, the Centralia city council member.
But Henderson says he surrendered the house in May of 2010 as a result of a bankruptcy.
Henderson said he believes it’s now owned by a loan servicing company in Colorado, and that neither they nor the previous bank that had the mortgage have properly recorded the change of owners.
The ensuing confusion even resulted in a nuisance infraction being issued to Henderson in late June, following a complaint about a large pile of garbage and a non-running vehicle on the property. But the police chief told him today the department was asking that to be dismissed, according to Henderson.
Henderson did say he has since been made aware there were some “petty burglary folks” squatting there as well as someone whose children were removed by Child Protective Services.
Police and fire authorities got one report the day of the fire of an individual walking away from the area, but that hasn’t been substantiated, according to police Sgt. Fitzgerald.
He said police are actively seeking people with information.
“It’s suspicious,” Fitzgerald said. “Houses do not spontaneously catch on fire.”
Mack and Fitzgerald are asking for anyone who knows anything or learns something about the cause of the fire to call them. Mack 360-330-9854. Fitzgerald 360-330-7614.
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