Fire Marshal is Not Ruling Out Arson at Northwest San Angelo House Fire

Fire Marshal Ross Coleman is not ruling out arson as a cause of the fire that destroyed a wood frame house near Lillie St. and W. 16th St. in northwest San Angelo Tuesday afternoon.

Coleman said that his investigation will look at all evidence and possible ways the fire started before making a determination.

"It could be several things. It's an older home, older wires, older construction and the normal abnormalities you see with older homes in San Angelo, and then we have these things from the eyewitnesses, so we've got to balance this out and make sure we're making the right decision here. I can't tell you one way or the other (at this early stage of the investigation)," Coleman said.

"We have isolated a physical area of origin and we're probably going to be here a little longer than normal," Coleman said.

At this older home, no one can identify the exact address.

As the fire happened, starting at 5:20 p.m. Tuesday:

San Angelo firefighters are battling a structure fire near the intersection of W. 16^th and Lillie Streets in northwest San Angelo. The fire broke out just after 5 p.m.

Flames from the house fire could be seen from the San Angelo LIVE! tower.

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As of 5:30 p.m., firefighters said the primary fire was knocked down in addition to an attic fire. What remains are smoldering fires that needed to be handled. Fire hoses are stretched throughout the area, as far away as W. 17th and Shelton. All streets around the area are blocked.

Firefighters are examining the structure for entry to make sure no one was inside the burning house.

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More details will be posted here when available.

Update 5:42 p.m.

An interesting tidbit was overheard on the radio: A person of interest was found down Shelton St. A witness indicated that the person of interest was seen walking around with a gas can complaining, "I just got dumped. I'm going to burn her house down."

Update 5:54 p.m.

The owners of the home, that now looks like it's been burned to a crisp, rented the home to a cousin who was not present during the time of the fire. 

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The front windows and doors are all smashed out, and there is a lot of smoke still in the area. Firefighters are still fighting flames in the back of the home.

Update 6:50 p.m.

Batallion Chief Royce Owen briefed the media at approximately 6:30 p.m.

The alarm for the house fire happened at 5:20 p.m. and Ladder 1 from Station #1 was first on scene. Engines 5 and 6 arrived shortly thereafter. "It was a fully-involved structure fire," Owen said. Firefighters were unable to enter the structure upon arrival and could not fight the flames from the interior. Instead, the initial attack was what Owen termed an "exterior attack."

"Within 20 minutes, the fire was under control," Owen said. At that time, firefighters did enter the structure with caution because a back wall and the back side of the roof had collapsed.

Firefighters conducted a search for souls inside and found no one, thankfully. Owen added, "We don't think anyone was at home at the time."

Two challenges faced the firefighters in extinguishing the blaze. The first was because of the location of the fire, they were unable to shutoff electrical power to the house. AEP arrived shortly after they were called and shutoff power upstream from the address. The second challenge was narrow passages and junk impeded the access of the larger trucks.

"Generally you have a contents fire--clothing, things like that. And then it progresses to a point where it actually involves the structure but when we arrived on the scene with this fire, fire had already involved the structure--the structure itself was involved with fire. It had been burning for some time before we were called," Owen said.

"Was it arson?" KLST asked.

"I can't really say at this time," Owen said.

Fire Marshal Ross Coleman briefed the media next.

"We have isolated a physical area of origin and we're probably going to be here a little longer than normal," Coleman said.

When asked if his investigation so far is suspecting arson, Coleman said, "There's some rumors of that." Coleman added that his investigation will look at all evidence and possible ways the fire started before making a determination.

"It could be several things. It's an older home, older wires, older construction and the normal abnormalities you see with older homes in San Angelo, and then we have these things from the eyewitnesses, so we've got to balance this out and make sure we're making the right decision here. I can't tell you one way or the other (at this early stage of the investigation)," Coleman said.

At this older home, no one can identify the exact address.