WESTLOCK – While the cause of an early-morning inferno that destroyed a three-story four-plex in Westlock in mid-June remains “undetermined” RCMP have closed their investigation.
Westlock RCMP Corp. Leigh Drinkwater confirmed Nov. 4 there were “no indications of any criminality” and the file has essentially been closed unless they receive more information. Town of Westlock firefighters were called to the building located at 9819 – 100th Street around 2:30 a.m. Saturday, June 19 and found the front fully-engulfed in flames — the building contained two basement suites and a pair of above-ground units. Two occupants of the building were already out when crews arrived and were unharmed, while the only other person living in the building was not at home.
Five Westlock County firefighters, as well as a county fire truck, joined the 11-member complement from the town and were able to get the fire under control in about 45 minutes. In addition to the four-plex being gutted, the siding on the home to the west was also scorched.
“Unless something else comes forward to indicate that the fire was criminal in nature, our file is going to be closed,” said Drinkwater.
An Aug. 9 release posted to the Town of Westlock Fire Department's Facebook page and attributed to chief Stuart Koflick stated their investigation had been unable to determine the cause of the blaze — on Aug. 18 the building was torn down. Koflick confirmed Nov. 5 their “file on this fire is closed, unless new information becomes available.”
“There are some missing pieces that we’re hoping that the RCMP can maybe look into to kind of put the puzzle together,” said Koflick in an Aug. 13 interview. “Undetermined could be accidental, but we don’t have those pieces of the puzzle. It could be suspicious, but we don’t have those pieces of the puzzle.”
Speaking broadly, Drinkwater explained that when a fire department does its investigation it solely focuses on the blaze itself.
“They do it from the technical end, point of origin and things like that — purely fire. What we do to assist is we collect the statements and then marry them up to figure out if there is any criminality or not. And then depending on how that goes we may or may not end up with enough evidence to identify a suspect,” Drinkwater explained.
“So, you hear about the condo fires in Edmonton where someone put a cigarette in a planter. So there has to be the determination if there is actual criminality, or if it’s just simple negligence.”
In August, Koflick said as per National Fire Protection Association protocols, there are four categories investigators can select as a cause — accidental, natural, incendiary (intentional) and undetermined. If they can’t conclusively put an ignition sequence of events together then it’s called “undetermined.”
“We investigate the where, the how and the what and the RCMP are more of the who and the why, if there’s a who and a why,” Koflick explained in August. “We use a scientific process that starts off with identifying the problem, gathering data, evaluating the data and developing a hypothesis. We test the hypothesis and then we come to a conclusion. So we’re at the end of our investigative process and we’ve given the file to the RCMP.”
