John Bates is the Fire Marshall for the Keene City Fire Department. His job entails several aspects of fire safety, including:

investigating fires;
educating the community about fire safety concerns he sees in the city; and
enforcing fire codes in businesses and residences in Keene.

Kristen talked with John about his job and what he found at the Grove Street fire scene. If you are interested in more information, you can hear more about how John does his job on this page.

John's findings about the Grove Street fire:

The fire started on a love seat where there shouldn’t have been a fire
Was it electrical in origin? No, nothing was plugged into outlets.
After the investigation, 2 possible explanations remained:
- Someone came in and started the fire.
- Or it was an unintentional ignition.
- Because there is more than one viable hypothesis, the cause is unresolved.
John doesn’t believe it was criminal because there was video surveillance available next door. You can see the sequence described in the summary above - alarms going off, the passerby entering the building and leaving and then the police.
There were smoking materials near point of origin, but John couldn’t prove they were the ignition source.
In the end, no one can really tell what happened to start the fire.

The importance of smoke alarms

A key element of this story is the importance of smoke alarms. In this case, everyone was fortunate that the upstairs smoke alarm was functioning. In the downstairs apartment, the smoke alarm was disabled. If this situation had been reversed, it is likely that the fire would have been fatal and much more damaging, as the disabled smoke detector would not have drawn the attention of the passerby.

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More information about fire safety in Keene can be found at the Keene Fire web page at https://ci.keene.nh.us/fire/fire-prevention-fire-alarm