ATF to investigate fire on 'The Block'
National ATF team to be in Baltimore Wednesday
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Photographer: Ryan McCoy
Copyright 2010 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Posted: 12/06/2010
BALTIMORE - Holliday at East Baltimore Street is still roped off with crime tape, keeping the continuous stream of onlookers at a safe distance to point, stare and take pictures of the damage done and the effort to figure out why.
"We owe it to the citizens of Baltimore to let them know why they were inconvenienced, why these businesses are going to be closed for a couple of days and we're going to try to get this area up and running as soon as possible," said BFD Deputy Chief Raymond O’Brocki.
O’Brocki says that starts today with firefighters working to secure and sure up the burned out buildings making them safe for investigators to enter.
This was a massive fire that will require an equally impressive investigation.
"An investigation this large of scale, with this many moving parts...us, the ATF, state fire marshal, police arson requires a lot of planning. We're going to try and accomplish in three days what would take by ourselves four or five weeks."
"This fire scene has caused a major disruption to downtown Baltimore and the citizens of the state of Maryland. It is our job to determine what happened here," said ATF Special Agent Sheree Mixell.
The ATF's national team will be on the ground starting tomorrow at the request of the Baltimore City Fire Department.
Resources like special canines, chemists and trained fire investigators will all be aimed at condensing a large fire scene into manageable investigation.
"Fire does tremendous devastation and destruction to a scene and it is up to our agents and investigators to determine what the cause of this fire was and what the origin of this fire was and hopefully what was responsible for this unfortunate circumstance," said Mixell.
It is a process that will begin tomorrow as firefighters spend today securing the structures.; all in front of a captive audience waiting to see exactly what sparked downtown Baltimore to burn.
The Baltimore Fire Department believes with all the help, it is confident investigators will find a cause to the fire.
Copyright AP Modified, Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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