SUSPICIOUS FIRES MOUNT
3 blazes damaged or destroyed vacant structures in 2-day span
A fire that damaged a vacant one-story masonry building at the Rondout Creek waterfront was “definitely incendiary,” the city fire chief said Monday, bringing to at least three the number of suspicious nighttime blazes in the area in a span of about 48 hours.
The other two fires were in East Kingston, a hamlet in the neighboring town of Ulster, and Kingston Fire Chief Mark Brown said city fire investigators are “in communication” with investigators in other jurisdictions and with the Ulster County Arson Task Force.
“Is there a link? I don’t know,” Brown said. “It’s going to take some time to figure that out.”
Town of Ulster Police Chief Kyle Berardi said Monday that the two East Kingston fires remained under investigation and that his department was working with county and state investigators.
“It’s hard to say if they’re linked or done by the same person,” Berardi said, noting the fires had not been deemed arson, but rather are considered “suspicious in nature.”
Wayne Freer, the arson investigation coordinator with the Ulster County Arson Task Force, could not be immediately be reached for comment
Monday.
Brown declined to discuss specifics of the investigation into the masonry building fire, which was reported about 9:35 p.m. Friday, but he said firefighters “rule out every possible cause” of a blaze before declaring it suspicious or incendiary.
“When there’s no electric and no heat, you narrow it down quickly and determine that it didn’t accidently start,” the chief said.
The fire was in a building at 10 North St., on a property once used as the Millens Recycling Center. It took firefighters about an hour to knock the blaze down, and Kingston Deputy Fire Chief Wayne Platte said the building was not a total loss.
Saturday night, a fire that also has been deemed suspicious destroyed the vacant building at 59 Brigham St. in East Kingston that used to be the East Kingston Methodist Church.
East Kingston Fire Chief Bill McDermott said the building was unoccupied and in a state of disrepair,
and that the fire, reported about 11:30 p.m., was considered “suspicious and incendiary” because there was no electric service to the building.
Some 50 firefighters from six companies battled the blaze for about two hours before they were able to contain it, McDermott said.
Shortly after 11:30 p.m. Thursday, a fire on John Street in East Kingston destroyed an abandoned two-story wooden shed and damaged an adjoining chicken coop. McDermott said that fire, too, was considered suspicious because there was no electricity to
either the shed or a house on the foreclosed property. On Friday, he said the Ulster County Arson Task Force and town of Ulster police were investigating.
Berardi is asking that anyone who may have “seen anything or anyone that might have been out of place” in or around the time of either East Kingston fire call town of Ulster police at (845) 382-1111 and ask for the Detective Division.
There also was a fire Saturday afternoon in a vacant trailer on Hill Road in the town of Kingston. The cause of that blaze remained undetermined Monday.