Last Wednesday when I was in school around 1:30 PM or so, I walked into my math class to find one of the computers streaming live footage of a garden ridge pottery burning down. I quickly learned that this was actually right across the street from the school and I could walk over to the window and literally see the fire from my classroom. For the entire class, we just watched the stream and during this time, sense nobody knew anything about the fire, I hoped on the police scanner and started listening in to what was going on. I learned that it was a 3 alarm fire that started around 12:30 PM and there was a loud explosion reported by a few customers right as the center of the store erupted into fire. I also got on my school’s HAM radio and asked around about the fire and learned that the cause was supposedly a malfunctioning pottery kiln. The fire continued through the day and was eventually extinguished several hours later, however the entire building was destroyed.
I went to the store located next to it the next day to do some shopping and instantly I found large chunks of ash and burned rubble all over the adjoining parking lot, the building was still smoking heavily, and the entire parking lot and surrounding area of the burn site were fenced off with the ATF (alcohol tobacco and firearms) and the FBI investigating the site, which confirmed my suspicions that this was arson. I went over to the fence and started taking some photos with my cell phone, but then a cop quickly drove over to me and yelled at me over the loud-speaker to put my hands where he could see them and walk towards his voice. I complied quickly and once he saw that it was just a cell phone I was holding, he let me relax but he told me that I couldn’t be anywhere near the site, even though I was behind all the police lines and fences. I quickly left, but I did manage to get about 6 good photos of the damage before I was stopped. A few days later, I found out on the news that the ATF investigations best guess so far is that it was arson.
Anways, what do you all think could be the cause of the fire and what do you all think of this. Ill try and upload my photos later.