MEXICO — State fire investigators are seeking help from the public to learn who intentionally destroyed an uninhabited two-story house by fire early Tuesday morning at 42 Mexico Ave.
There were no injuries in the 12:30 a.m. inferno, but the fire scorched a tenant’s white Dodge Neon parked in the driveway of Diane Ellis’s house next door at 1 Middle Ave. Intense heat also melted siding on Ellis’s two-story house.
The uninsured Mexico Avenue house was destroyed by an arsonist, senior state fire investigator Dan Young said at scene Tuesday morning.
“Based on everything we’ve found so far, I’m going to say it’s a set fire, an incendiary fire,” Young said.
Firefighters found a gas grill lighter nearby and bagged it as evidence, Mexico fire Chief Gary Wentzell said.
“I’m not going to release how or what we think happened, but if anybody has any information or pictures or video, please call the Mexico police station, or preferably the State Fire Marshal’s Office,” Young said.
The police station number is 364-5686 and the fire marshal’s office is 626-3870.
Young estimated the loss at between $80,000 and $100,000. According to town office records, the building, which was formerly owned by Joseph P. Cataloni, was valued at $33,800.
Businessman Todd Wardwell recently bought the tax-acquired house from the town for $5,000, a town official said Tuesday.
Wentzell said Wardwell had put several thousand dollars into renovating the building to comply with fire code.
“Obviously, he’s put a ton of money into this in the last three weeks and it’s got no insurance on it,” Wentzell said.
“All new decks, windows, and doors. I actually was in this with him last week, telling him some of the things he’s going to have to do to meet code, which he had already started on.”
The building didn’t have electricity and Wardwell hadn’t been working inside the house for three or four days, Wentzell said.
A neighbor across the street on Osgood Avenue came home at about 12:30 a.m., saw the fire and called 911, he said.
Firefighters from the Mexico station, which is less than a mile away, and Rumford firefighters were sent, along with Med-Care Ambulance.
“When I left my house and I got on Backkingdom Road, all you could see was an orange ball about 300 feet in the air,” Wentzell said.
“When we got on scene with the trucks, (the fire) was already through the roof.”
Neighbor Dwight J. Frink, who lives three houses down at 11 Middle Ave., said he and his girlfriend were watching TV when they heard a siren.
“I happened to gaze up right toward my window that faces that house and I have a dark blue curtain and all you see is bright orange shining through my curtain,” Frink said.
“So I opened up my curtain and the whole house is engulfed in flames in a matter of seconds.”
Wentzell said there was nothing but wood inside the building, which was wide open inside due to renovations.
“There was no Sheetrock, because it was being remodeled, so the whole inside was wood and it goes quick,” he said. “There was nothing to stop it and it was an old building.”
Frink said he believes it was built in the 1940s.
“The building was gone when we got here, so we concentrated our water on that building,” Wentzell said, pointing to Ellis’s house.
“And then once we got enough manpower here, we could designate someone to stay on that building while the rest fought (the fire).”
He said they knocked it down in an hour, and then mopped up hot spots.
Wentzell said they believe the fire started on the first floor, either in a bedroom or a back room beside it.
“Actually, we had a fire in this building about four years ago,” he said.
“But we got that guy,” Young said of the person who is in prison.
“The person identified for doing the first fire is not a suspect at this time. We know where he is.”
Young and fellow senior fire investigator Rick Shepard gathered evidence from the ruble after an incendiary-detection dog alerted them to three locations in the back room section that Wentzell identified.
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- A two-story apartment house at 42 Mexico Ave. in Mexico, was destroyed by fire early Tuesday morning. A senior fire investigator said on scene that the blaze was intentionally set.
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- Senior state fire investigator Dan Young said late Tuesday morning that someone deliberately set the fire that destroyed this vacant two-story house at 42 Mexico Ave., in Mexico earlier Tuesday morning.
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- During an investigation into Tuesday morning’s fire that destroyed a vacant two-story house at 42 Mexico Ave., senior state fire investigator Rick Shepard, right, photographs a charred board held by senior state fire investigator Dan Young, left, and Mexico fire Chief Gary Wentzell. The board was then bagged as evidence.
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- While sniffing for accelerants late Tuesday morning at a vacant two-story house at 42 Mexico Ave. in Mexico that was destroyed earlier by an arsonist, Shasta, a 4-year-old black Labrador retriever leads senior state fire investigator Dan Young through the debris.
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- Senior state fire investigator Dan Young, center, tells excavator operator Todd Wardwell to stop lifting debris from Tuesday morning’s arson fire that destroyed the two-story uninsured house that Wardwell was renovating at 42 Mexico Ave. in Mexico. To rule out an electrical fire, Young said he was looking for the electrical box and cord, which can be seen in the foreground by following Wardwell’s left hand down and toward the bucket.
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- Senior state fire investigator Dan Young and Shasta, an incendiary-detecting black Labrador retriever from the state fire marshal’s office, search for clues late Tuesday morning after Young said someone intentionally set fire to a vacant two-story house under renovation at 42 Mexico Ave. in Mexico.
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- A Dodge Neon parked in a driveway behind the four-apartment complex in the background at 1 Middle Ave. in Mexico, was burned early Tuesday morning when the vacant two-story house next door at 42 Mexico Ave., was intentionally set ablaze, state and local fire investigators said. Intense heat melted siding on two sides of the Middle Avenue house, exposing insulation and boards.
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