OFFICIALS INVESTIGATE HOUSE FIRE

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Auth~orities Tuesday night were investigating what they termed as "a fire of suspicious origin" that destroyed an apartment building in the 300 block of South Pacific Street.

The fire was discovered at about 6:19 a.m. Tuesday by one of the tenants of the one-and-one-half story wood-frame structure that had been converted into a five-unit apartment building. It is owned by Walter J. Wright of Cape Girardeau.

Fire department officials said three of the five apartments were occupied at the time of the fire. All of the tenants escaped safely into the frigid early-morning darkness.

Assistant Fire Chief Paul Kesterson said he called for police and fire department fire investigators as soon as he arrived at the scene.

"When we arrived, (the structure) was fully involved in smoke and flames in all but the second floor, on the south side," said Kesterson. "It had a good head start on us."

Kesterson said he called for investigators because the fire "didn't look kosher."

Officially, the cause of the fire has not been determined. As soon as the fire was out, police and fire investigators sealed off the area around the burned-out building and began an extensive search of the rubble, taking pictures, and looking for evidence that the fire might have been started with some type of a flammable substance that could have caused the fire to spread more rapidly.

Because of the intensity of the fire when they arrived, Kesterson said it took firefighters about 45 minutes to "knock it down to where we could make an interior attack."

"After we saw what we had, and realized the building was too far gone and the intensity of the fire, we put our immediate attention on saving the residences to the west, north and south of the burning building," he said.

Kesterson said the house on the north side of the burning building received minor damage caused by the intense heat.

Capt. Ron Kistner said the blaze started in the northwest corner of the structure, in the kitchen area. It spread through the entire first and second floors, causing heavy fire, heat and smoke damage to both floors.

Firefighters from Stations 1 and 2 responded to the alarm.

As a precaution, Kistner said firefighters and equipment from Station 3 were moved to Station 1 to provide better fire protection for the rest of the city while firefighters were at the South Pacific street fire.

Despite the cold temperatures and icy conditions, Kistner said no firefighters were injured.