Ohio Chief Says His City Has an Arsonist at Work

March 29--"Yes, we have an arsonist or arsonists at work in the city," Portsmouth Fire Chief Bill Raison said Wednesday morning standing at the scene of a house fire on 16th Street in Portsmouth. "In fact, we were checking things this morning, and since the First of January we've had 23 structure fires, and 16 of them are suspicious fires."

Portsmouth firefighters were called out to four more house fires Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

Assistant Fire Chief Randy Duncan said the first call-out occurred at 10:20 p.m., when the department responded to a fire at 1633 Seventh St.

"While we were fighting that fire, we saw that there was a fire in the basement of the house next door at 1629 Seventh St.," Duncan said. "While we continued to fight those fires we got called to another fire at 1120 16th St."

Raison said the crews had returned to the fire stations about 2 a.m. Wednesday, and about an hour later, had to return to the 16th Street fire.

"We were tired. We had been out all night, and we had to go back," Raison said. "And this was not a re-kindle. Someone had set it on fire again."

As three investigators from the State Fire Marshal's office, including acting bureau chief Josh Hobbs, combed through the rubble at the 16th Street fire scene, Raison talked about the similarities some recent fires have had to each other.

"I normally don't call them out for a vacant house in the middle of the night, because they are swamped themselves," Raison said. "And they've got to come from out of town. But when we had the third one I called Josh Hobbs. I said, 'I think we need to get somebody down here because I don't know when this is going to stop.'"

Raison is convinced some of the recent fires have been set by the same person.

"The similarity is vacant houses, and some of them appear to be related. I'm not sure all of them are related," Raison said. "So it's possible it's the same group or individual, but it's also possible that it's not. That's something we're going to have to work out. Some of them are very similar, and I feel comfortable in saying they are connected, but some of them aren't quite the same."

Raison said the similar fires were the two on Seventh Street on Tuesday night and fire at 2011 Sixth St. and one at Seventh and Campbell that started within minutes of each in February, also believed at the time to have been intentionally set by the same person or people. In the same manner that the fires occurred Wednesday night on Seventh Street, those February fires occurred within minutes of each other.

"They were dispatched to the garage fire," Raison said. "And while they were at the garage fire, someone came down the street and said there's a house on fire down the street."

Raison pointed to a house one block over on 17th Street.

"We had a fire at that house Sunday," Raison said.

Raison said he fears someone is going to get injured or killed if the person or persons responsible for the fires continue to set them.

"Twenty-five percent of firefighter injuries are responding to the scene," Raison said. "Last night is a good example. They started about 10:30 last night, and we were at the scene here until 2 o'clock this morning. We cleared the engines by then. We still had investigators here until after 3 a.m.. So they're tired. They're beat down, and then an-hour-and-a-half later they're up and they're heading out the door again. And you're driving an 80,000 pound ladder truck through town with lights and sirens on, and that's always a dangerous thing. Then, you add the fatigue to it, it does increase the level."

Raison said the closeness of the houses on Seventh Street, put at risk other houses where people live.

"If we had had the extent of fire involvement there that we had here, you would have had occupied structures that were in pretty serious trouble," Raison said.

Raison said he hopes someone who knows about the fires will contact his office or the office of the State Fire Marshal, "because they need to know that if they do they may save someone's life. If they don't, someone might get killed the next time."

Frank Lewis may be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 232, or at [email protected].

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