And community members may never find out if a house fire in West Dayton that left five people dead was accidental in nature or deliberately set.
Fire officials say the fire causes will stay undetermined unless more information becomes available.
“Due to factors such as the extent of damage at an incident site and lack of other available evidence, DFD fire investigators are sometimes unable to determine the cause of a fire to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, and must therefore conclude it as undetermined,” said Dayton fire Captain Brad French.
Deadly West Dayton blaze
A fire broke out in the early morning hours of March 8 at a residential property at 508 N. Broadway Street in the Old Dayton View neighborhood.
The West Dayton property was supposed to be vacant, but officials discovered and recovered the bodies of five people inside.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
Neighbors said squatters and homeless individuals regularly hung out and slept inside the property, and the victims had utilized local community kitchens and homeless shelters.
In his report, Dayton fire investigator Nicholas Scowden said he could not identify where the fire started or what caused it.
However, he said he was able to rule out possible ignition sources, like electrical and natural gas appliances and devices and building components.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
Scowden said he could not rule out the possibility that the fire was set deliberately or was caused by warming activities like cooking fires or open-flame devices for lighting.
Interviews with people who escaped the fire that day suggested that trespassers inside the property used makeshift warming devices with open flames.
The victims had high levels of carbon monoxide in their systems, soot deep in their lungs and drugs in their blood, according to coroner exams. They were killed by exposure to the products of combustion, says an investigative fire report.
Scowden ruled the fire undetermined.
Traxler Mansion catches fire twice
On April 23, Dayton firefighters responded to a fire at the Traxler Mansion property near the corner of North Broadway Street and Yale Ave. in northwest Dayton.
The mansion, built in 1911, had been vacant for years and police had responded to the property on multiple occasions on reports of squatters and scrappers, according to a Dayton Fire Department incident report.
The mansion was headed to auction at a sheriff’s sale.
Fire investigator Scowden in his report said a fire pattern analysis was not feasible because the building was severely damaged and at risk of collapse. However, most of the structures four walls remained standing, according to Preservation Dayton Inc.
Scowden wrote that the fire originated inside the building but he could not determine the exact point of origin or the cause and he ruled it undetermined.
Even though neighbors had theories about what might have caused the blaze, Scowden said no one produced any evidence and no witnesses came forward with information.
Four months later, the Traxler Mansion caught fire again and city officials ordered the building to be demolished because they said it posed a public safety threat.
Scowden’s report says the origin and cause of the fire was undetermined.
Wright factory site fire in March
A fire at the Wright brother airplane factory site in West Dayton caused considerable damage to the property.
The blaze, on March 26, damaged multiple hangars.
A pair of hangars are historic and were home to the first airplane manufacturing facilities in the United States, which belonged to the Wright brothers.
The 1910 buildings still had most of their original wood roof, windows and other historic fabric, said Kendell Thompson, superintendent of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.
The extent of the damage of the city of Dayton-owned property remains unclear.
The city hopes to redevelop the 54-acre property into a mix of uses, but the destructive blaze has raised questions about the future of the site.
Officials say they hope the property will become a premier amenity in a part of the city that has suffered from disinvestment.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Dayton fire Capt. French last fall told this newspaper that the fire at the site was formally classified as undetermined.
Fire officials said they would update the rulings on these fires if additional information becomes available.
“The DFD Fire Investigation Unit frequently asks for assistance from the public for any information related to fire incidents under investigation by directing citizens to the DFD tipline (937-333-TIPS) and Miami Valley Crime Stoppers (937-222-STOP),” he said. “If additional information becomes available for any fire incident, regardless of the stage of the investigation or current determination, the Dayton Fire Department will process it accordingly.”
Through roughly the end of the third quarter of 2023, the Dayton fire department recorded 414 fires in the city, which included minor events like grass, car and trash fires, according to department data.
After investigation, about 75 of those fires were ruled to have causes undetermined.
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