Fire marshal: Two recent East Lyme fires not connected
East Lyme — Two fires — one that displaced a family and one that engulfed a building product showroom and warehouse — are still under investigation.
Town Fire Marshal John Way said the two fires are not connected and there's no reason to believe either was started intentionally.
On Wednesday, a two-and-a-half-story house on 15 Partridge Court became engulfed in flames, prompting response from Flanders Fire Department and mutual aid calls to various other departments. No one was home at the time.
Way said the fire marshal's department, which includes him and two part-time assistants, have spoken with witnesses and hope to find video from doorbell cameras and outdoor surveillance equipment at houses in the area.
"So we're going to take that into account and review that information, if it is available, and then use that to kind of put the puzzle together so we can hopefully come up with a conclusion," he said.
He said the fire marshal's department and utility companies ruled out a gas leak as the cause of the fire.
East Lyme police Chief Mike Finkelstein, a certified fire investigator, said he also assisted with the search for the cause and origin of the fire. "At this point, it appears it began outside the home," he said.
He reiterated that the fire did not appear to have been set intentionally.
Finkelstein said his certification as a fire investigator brings him into a lot of investigations to help out. "It doesn't mean it's criminal because we're involved, just that, in my role, I'm assisting them," he said.
A fire on Saturday at Atlantic Building Products at 206 Boston Post Road began sometime before 11:30 a.m. Flanders Fire Department and several neighboring departments responded. Officials say there were at least two employees in the building when the fire broke out and they were able to evacuate. No injuries were reported.
Smoke from the blaze could be seen for miles.
Way said a fire of that size and complexity takes time to investigate.
"It's not like TV where it's done in 45 minutes from start to finish," he said. "For a lot of people, what they don't understand is we can't always put the exact cause on paper, because we really don't know. We'll do our best to come up with a hypothesis of what happened, hopefully connect everything together, but very rarely do we come up with the exact cause of an incident."
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