Officials talk about recent vacant house fires
JACKSON, Tenn. — Two vacant houses in the City of Jackson both caught fire recently. A fire marshal talked about if there was any relation between the two fires.
“The two house fires we had had been the same vicinity in midtown on Dancy Street and Pleasant Street. The one on Dancy, it was boarded up to the best of the owner’s ability, but they still gained entry to it. There was evidence of separate fires being started for warmth on the first floor,” said Jackson Fire Marshal Lamar Childress.
The fire marshal says there are protocols for keeping these vacant homes safe, and how they work to avoid things like the past two fires from happening.
“Anytime we identify vacant properties, we refer them to the City of Jackson Housing and Codes Department for a follow up. According to the fire code, the owners of the property are supposed to keep them secure and boarded up,” Childress said.
We asked officials if these house fires caused a sense of urgency to identify vacant houses in order to try and limit the amount of these occurrences.
“It does. It does. As that situation arises, it does kind of say, ‘Hey, maybe we need to put this up to the forefront.’ Instead of looking at other code violations, lets look at what we can concentrate on: vacant houses. You know, in all of our areas, I can send them out in all of our district and say lets focus on these vacant houses because it seems to be a trend,” said Building Official Greg Rowland.
This will remain a concern for the Jackson Fire Department while the temperatures are still cold.
Fire officials say both of these house fires seem to be caused by people breaking in to find shelter for the night.
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