CHICAGO, IL -- Police and fire investigators are looking into the possibility that arson was behind an extra-alarm fire that gutted a family-run discount store on the Southwest Side Tuesday.
The fire at a Family Dollar Store, 2801 W. 79th St., appears to have started when a stack of toilet paper ignited near the back of the store, according to a fire marshal from the Office of Fire Investigations who did not want to be identified.
The fire marshal said an employee put out the flames with a fire extinguisher, but a rush of oxygen reignited the materials when they were thrown in a back alley.
By the time the employee returned, the fire had grown too big to be managed with the extinguisher, the fire marshal said.
Eventually the fire spread throughout the building, gutting the store and causing the roof to collapse.
Firefighters battled the fire from about 4:30 p.m. until about 6:30 p.m., according to Fire Media Director Larry Langford.
Bomb and Arson Section Detective Tim O'Meara said the first firefighters to arrive may have narrowly escaped tragedy. They began to battle the flames from inside the store.
But then a fire chief arrived and "sized up the building," O'Meara said. Noticing that it had a truss roof, which is liable to collapse under undue stress, he alerted the firefighters and made them fight the blaze from the outside shortly before the roof buckled and fell into the store.
Firefighters were then hoisted above the flames on cherry-picker cranes and fire ladders to continued to spray water onto the building until the fire was extinguished.
Langford did not know how many people were inside the store when the fire broke out but said all the customers and employees left safely, and there were no rescues.
While investigating the fire, officials "received information to indicate concern of arson," Langford said at the scene. He declined to elaborate on the information.
"Is (the fire)suspicious? I can't say yes, I can't say no at this time," O'Meara said.
As for how the stack of toilet paper could ignite, O'Meara said, "It could be a cigarette lighter, it could be a chemical reaction, it could be anything, but right now it's undetermined."
The Fire Department's Office of Fire Investigations and the Bomb and Arson officers "will start digging, literally, and do interviews of employees and store management--and customers, if they can find any," Langford said.
Dominic Riccordino, of Riccordino Realty at 2843 W. 79th St., said that the family-run discount store had been in the neighborhood for "two or three years."
"It's just another neighborhood business destroyed by fire," he said.
Kurt Swan, who lives across the street from the gutted store, said he saw white smoke pouring from inside the building shortly before firefighters arrived.
"I was in the basement with my mother and I asked her if something was burning," Swan said. "She then said, `I don't know, I wasn't cooking anything.' I then ran upstairs and saw smoke through our window coming from the dollar store."
Water from the fire hoses flooded the street on the 7900 block of South California Avenue, but a convenience store called Mozarts Foods that was adjacent to the discount store seemed untouched by the blaze.
