Cairo's burning issue, Part 2: Resources dwindle after fire investigator's retirement; city calls on state police to help investigate

About the series: Since September 2007, Cairo fire officials, with the arson division of the state's fire marshal office, have investigated 59 fires; 48 have been determined to be arson. These cases have been investigated largely by two individuals, one of whom has since retired. Only recently have city officials asked for help from the Illinois State Police; the Cairo Police Department has not been involved. This series looks at the challenges facing investigators from a law enforcement and resources standpoint.

CAIRO, Ill. -- John Meyer is sick of making the phone calls to the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal. He's the fire chief. And his town has been burning to the ground building by building, at least 50 of them since the autumn of 2007. His crew members, some paid and some volunteer, have a big job to protect a city faced with a decades-long economic decline and a rising inventory of vacant buildings. But he and his three full-time firefighters and team of volunteers fought each of those fires all across town.

Meyer says he has little control of the arson situation. The fire department doesn't investigate all suspicious fires; that's the role of the fire marshal's office. But Cairo's not alone in its problems with resources. The marshal's office has issues of its own.

The marshal's office has investigated nearly 60 Cairo fires since September 2007. Forty-eight of those were labeled as arson, according to incident reports obtained by the Southeast Missourian.

Two investigators have handled all but one of those arson cases. And one of them recently retired. Now only one state fire marshal investigator is on the clock in the area. Cairo is only one of his responsibilities.

Finally, Meyer has asked for more help. Now the Illinois State Police is involved.

The fire marshal's office tracks arson cases statewide, although the office could provide figures for the time frame that directly correlated to the incident reports obtained by the Southeast Missourian. However, from 2006 through 2010, the state's office investigated 1,637 arsons, which translates to one per every 7,837 Illinois residents. In a 39-month span beginning in September 2007, Cairo averaged one arson for every 58 residents, based on 2010 census figures.

Alexander County, Ill., was arson investigator Charlie Caldwell's primary assigned area, according to Richard Crum, director of the Division of Arson Investigations at the state fire marshal's office. Caldwell, now retired, covered six other primary counties and had a list of secondary counties he was assigned to if he was needed. Of the 59 fires labeled arson in Cairo since September 2007, Caldwell investigated more than 40. Dave Bandera, who was assigned Alexander County as a secondary investigation area, investigated 14. He's now the primary investigator in Cairo and all of Alexander County.

"You always have to talk with the fire marshal's office, and we have a good relationship with them," Meyer said in a recent interview. "Every time we call them, they come to assist. We've never been told no."

Within the last month the city has called upon the Illinois State Police, which is now reviewing 18 months' worth of arsons in Cairo.

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It's Sept. 15, 2007, and upon arrival at 1100 Poplar St., Caldwell gets a briefing from Meyer. Crews responded to the fire the day before, Meyer says. The structure was vacant and all utilities were shut off -- often the first signs a fire is suspicious rather than accidental.

Following the briefing in 2007, Caldwell steps carefully through the back door of the structure, noting immediately extensive fire damage at the ceiling level. Similar notations and sketches are made as he continues through the structure. In one of the three bedrooms he finds a one-gallon metal container on the floor near a mattress and charred bed springs. The container, with a liquid inside, is seized as evidence, and he continues to the final bedroom, which he later determines is where the fire started. It's an incendiary fire, he concluded.

"Once we have determined the origin and cause of the fire, we again will meet with local authorities, give them our findings and we may continue the investigation ourselves, or jointly," Crum said. "It can take anywhere from days, weeks, months or years. It depends on the case."

In this case, the investigation continued more than a month later. On Oct. 20, Caldwell interviewed a witness, whose name is redacted from the report. The witness said someone he knew in the community told him who set fire to the residence on Poplar Street. The name is given to Caldwell, but even with possible suspect information, the report doesn't indicate an arrest is made in connection to the fire.

Although the case remains open, it's a conclusion common among the fires labeled as arson in Cairo. From September 2007 to March 2011, officials have issued just one arrest warrant in connection to a handful of arsons in July 2008.

"We do get to the bottom of it. We know how it started and we know where it started and what they did it with. The who is the problem," Meyer said. "It takes awhile with arson investigations."

Sometimes it takes awhile to get to the scene as well.

"When we are requested by local authorities for assistance it could depend on the scope or the size of the fire, and how busy our investigators are, but generally it's within a day of the incident that we arrive," Crum said.

For fires investigated from 2007 to 2011, Caldwell arrived as many as four days following the blaze on a handful of occasions. Crum said the reason for the delay depends on the office's response criteria. If the fire was on weekend, as was an Elm Street fire in February 2010, and the following Monday was a holiday, the office's overtime restrictions would prevent the investigator from responding on that day. In the later part of 2009, the state fire marshal's office implemented a reduction in allowed overtime due to budget constraints.

In his opinion, Crum said Caldwell, with limited assistance from Bandera, was able to handle the workload. "We were able to operate under that situation with the amount of people that we had and the coverage area we had without any adverse effects," Crum said.

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The lack of arrests is not because investigators aren't developing leads in their cases.

"I cannot tell you why some of these cases are still unsolved. You need the population, you need the citizens to cooperate with you," Crum said. "It takes more than just going out and working the fire. You have to have people providing information, assisting law enforcement."

Bandera arrived to a scene in Cairo on June 13, 2008, less than 24 hours after fire gutted a single-family residence. While the home was destroyed, leaving little to investigate and even less to collect as evidence, Bandera was immediately briefed with three names of possible suspects for the fire at 314 24th St. A person called the police department and said he saw two men and one woman run out of the home, each carrying a gas can.

A witness relayed more pertinent information about the June 12 blaze to Bandera in a July 28, 2008, interview. The man said he was at 24th and Sycamore streets when he saw someone, whose name is redacted from Bandera's report, walk into a nearby yard and pick up a gas container filled with fuel. The witness told Bandera he continued to watch the man walk through tall weeds to the vacant 24th Street residence and then walk back about five minutes later. Less than 15 seconds later, the vacant house was in flames, the witness said. He concluded the interview by telling Bandera he thought the suspect was burning homes in the area in order to steal copper from the vacant structures. Despite the leads, the report doesn't indicate the suspect described by witnesses was arrested or even questioned.

With the number of unsolved arsons continuing to rise and the resources used to date wearing thin, Meyer felt it best -- to protect the community and his crew -- to bring in another agency to assist in solving the crimes.

"However far I have to go, I will, because it ultimately comes back as a reflection of me," he said. "It's very frustrating, it's very stressful."

The last known arson fire in Cairo, according to reports, was Jan. 22. Investigators labeled a fire on George Street in March as undetermined; a bedroom, the fire's point of origin, was destroyed.

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Although officials are certain not every fire in Cairo is started intentionally, it's hard to convince an entire community. Especially Cindy Campbell, whose downtown business, Fat Boy's Bar and Grill, suffered damages due to a Jan. 10 fire at a neighboring vacant structure on Commercial Avenue. The entire beer garden was destroyed, she said in a recent interview, and siding was dented caused by falling bricks from the burning structure. Six months later, Campbell is still trying to collect insurance costs for the damages and replace what the business lost. "I lost a lot of stuff. A carport, keg coolers, nine picnic tables, chain saws, ceiling fans and bar stools," she said. "We have a lot of stuff that we do outside."

After the fire, police did make arrests, but the suspects, who were caught leaving the scene, were later released. The fire was not ruled an arson.

Alexander County State's Attorney Jeff Farris said the building was scheduled for demolition and workers were removing plumbing from the structure, which is what investigators later determined caused the fire.

Campbell, like other Cairo residents, has her own theory.

"There's a lot of different rumors going around town, but my thoughts are how can they not be to blame for it if they were in there with a cutting torch or something like that causing sparks?" she said.

Farris and other investigators say they're aware of the rumors connected to the fire.

"If they have proof, other than what they think, bring it on," Farris said. "My officers will listen to anybody."

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The Cairo Fire Department doesn't just need the assistance of state agencies to help solve its pending arson crimes, but they also need the help of residents to keep the fires from happening to begin with. Meyer continues to ask the community to call police if they see suspicious activity around buildings in the city, especially vacant properties.

He hopes residents will be more cooperative.

"They won't do it, but we actually have to have their help," Meyer said. "We are a small town. It's hard for us to be everywhere."

And as a small town with a high percentage of vacant buildings, Cairo may continue to be vulnerable to fires. According to the analysis and research division of the National Fire Protection Association, 41 percent of intentional structure fires occur at vacant and unsecure buildings and 25 percent occur at vacant and secure buildings. Eight percent occur at occupied and operating structures. The percentage of total intentional structure fires is even higher for buildings under demolition.

"When a home becomes vacant, its likelihood of having a reported fire does not increase, all things combined, but the likelihood that any fire it does have will be an intentional fire increases sharply," researcher John Hall wrote in a 2010 NFPA report.

Knowing the risks associated with a high number of vacant structures in the city, Meyer and Cairo administration, including a new mayor, are actively seeking more grant funding to demolish some of the structures. One grant, no longer available through the federal government, Meyer said, allowed the city to demolish more than 150 buildings in the last four years. He's hoping a grant from a different funding sources is approved soon for demolition on several downtown commercial buildings. A separate grant would be needed to demolish more vacant, condemned homes.

"The city just doesn't have the money to do it," Meyer said. "There's so many here. ... People just moved out and left them."

As the fire department seeks answers to the unsolved crimes and funding for demolition, they're also seeking to build a better relationship with residents. They'll work on being more open with the public without disclosing important stages of the investigation, Meyer said, but residents also need general education about fire prevention. Firefighters have only brought educational opportunities to younger students at Cairo schools, but it has stopped there.

"We need to get out to the elderly. We need to get out to the general population," Meyer said.

In turn, he hopes residents will be more open with the fire department.

"There's so many things that people don't understand that take place, that factors into this," Meyer said. "I want them to know we are actively pursuing and investigating these cases. That's why I reached out even further, further than just us."

ehevern@semissourian.com

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Cairo, IL

Springfield, IL