Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN/AP) - Erie County District Attorney John Flynn says no charges will be filed from his office as a result of the fatal fire this past March at 743 Main Street LLC that claimed the life of Buffalo firefighter Jason Arno.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has officially ruled the fire as accidental
"The ATF came to the conclusion, and stated that the cause of the fire was the application of the open flame of the blowtorch that caused combustibles inside the doorway there to catch on fire on the other side of the door," detailed Flynn during a press briefing on Thursday. "Those combustibles, mainly bags of clothes that were inside the building there on the other side of the plywood. The origin of the fire was inside DC Theatricks just inside of that Northern doorway, where the masonry guys were doing the brickwork on. We know the origin, we know the cause, and we know that it's been ruled accidental."
Flynn says DC Theatricks was in the process of trying to find a new venue to call home and was the only tenant in the building at the time of the fire. They were renting the building on a monthly basis, and were only occupying the first floor and basement of the facility.
Former New York Congressman Chris Jacobs bought the building back in December, and had informed his tenants they were going to need to find a new home while renovations were being completed.
Listen LIVE to WBEN:
JP Contracting was a contractor hired directly by Jacobs to do some masonry on the outside of the building. Flynn says a couple of weeks before the fire, the contractor removed a metal door and replaced it with a piece of half-inch plywood that didn’t entirely fit the frame.
On the morning of the fire on March 1, the owner of DC Theatricks was getting ready for an order and left the building at around 4:46 a.m. EST and locked the door. There was no one inside the building when workers with JP Contracting arrived on site a few hours later.
At around 7:36 a.m. EST, the contractors started using a propane blowtorch and leaf blower to melt the snow and ice around the worksite, including the doorframe with the plywood. The workers also used a metal shovel, holding it up against the flames so that it wouldn't hit the plywood or enter the building.
However, it wasn't enough to keep an ember or spark from entering through the doorway and eventually causing the combustibles inside the building from catching fire.
The blowtorch was used on-and-off for about 45 minutes to melt the ice and snow around the door and on the ground before the workers commenced their masonry work at around 8:20 a.m. EST.
At around 9:53 a.m. EST, one of the workers still remaining on site noticed smoke coming from the building and made the 9-1-1 call two minutes later. Before the first engine truck from the Buffalo Fire Department arrived at around 9:58 a.m. EST, the worker had made a frantic attempt to try and put the fire out by throwing water into the building.
Related
The fire sparked, at least, two explosions that knocked firefighters who were outside the building off their feet, and sent smoke and debris billowing into the downtown street. Fire Commissioner William Renaldo described an explosion caught on video as a backdraft, which he said occurs when oxygen is “sucked into the building and then blown back.”
It was after the first explosion at around 10:07 a.m. EST when an evacuation order went out, but firefighters determined that firefighter Arno, who had issued a mayday call, was missing.
"When the firefighters who went back in found firefighter Arno, he was stuck. His foot got caught in a metal rack, a clothing rack must have fell on top of him, and his foot and leg got tied in the metal rod on a clothing rack and he was stuck. They couldn't get him out," Flynn said. "Then the second evacuation order came after the second explosion [10:18 a.m. EST], get out of the building, and they had to get out or they would have died as well, maybe. So they then evacuated the building, and he couldn't get out."
According to Flynn, the cause of Arno's death was due to smoke inhalation and thermal injuries. It wasn't until about three-and-a-half hours later at around 1:44 p.m. EST when firefighters recovered his body.
Other firefighters had suffered minor burns as well.
Flynn says the ATF's investigation into the fire was completed in mid-May, and his office received the final report a few weeks later in early June. For the past month, Flynn and his office have been following up their investigation after receiving that final report.
Flynn adds the ATF has also ruled out any other areas of the building, and were able to focus in on the one area of the doorway with the plywood covering the entryway.
As for the investigation into the death of firefighter Arno, Flynn was looking at potentially two charges as a result: Reckless Manslaughter (Manslaughter in the Second Degree) and Criminally Negligent Homicide.
In order to pursue either of those charges, Flynn says he needed to have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt as a result of the investigation. However, that evidence was just not there.
"There's a common denominator in both of these charges. I've got to be able to prove a substantial and unreasonable risk on top of a gross deviation of care here. On top of that, I have to factor in intervening events and intervening causes. And I also have to factor your factor in foreseeability. Is it foreseeable that someone's death would occur when they knew no one was in the building, no one was in a building, and they took precautions to make sure the flames did not get in the building," Flynn said.
"Think of it as a chain: If you have an action that occurs, then you have numerous links of the chain, and then at the end of the chain, a death occurs, I have to prove that not only the links of that chain are a direct correlation to the death, but on top of that, I've got to prove that nothing came in, intervening and broke the chain of the links. The bottom line is, I'm not able to do that. I'm clearly not able to do that."
While his heart continues to go out to the Arno family and to the Buffalo firefighting community, Flynn says this matter with his office is officially closed.