Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 23, 1993 TAG: 9310230183
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PHIL LONG KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: ORLANDO, FLA. LENGTH: Long
It was as if someone opened the kitchen door to hell.
Firefighters who arrived at an abandoned warehouse only minutes after a blaze began saw something they'd never seen or experienced before: an inferno so fierce that even 100 yards away, rail cars and mobile homes sizzled and blistered.
In the belly of the hollow building, a brilliant white flame clawed through walls and ceiling, shimmering unforgettably like a radiant wave.
Now, 2 1/2 years later, authorities believe the fire may have been a glimpse of a high-tech arson technique that has baffled investigators across the nation for a decade.
Until now, the technology of arson hadn't changed much since the advent of whale oil. Pour out something flammable, get it lit and get going.
The problem with such fires is in the "something flammable" stage: liquids or solids leave chemical traces, signposts to arson. Even gasoline leaves an odor that can be detected hours after it starts a blaze.
Then, in 1984, a new type of arson fire suddenly surfaced, one much hotter and much quicker than anything seen before, so hot that it leaves no trace of what started it. Pouring water on it actually feeds the blaze - it burns so hot that the water molecule is stripped of its oxygen atom and it is consumed by the flame.
Whatever starts these fires - perhaps something akin to solid rocket fuel - and whoever is behind it is a deep and complex mystery.
Experts call them "HTA" fires: High-Temperature Accelerant. They are changing the face of arson and threatening the safety of firefighters like nothing in the past 50 years.
"Comparing HTA fires to all the arsons before is like comparing a jet plane to a bicycle," said Richard Gehlhausen, who has investigated a dozen HTA fires in Seattle and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest and is one of the nation's top experts on the phenomenon.
In several HTA fires around Seattle, Gehlhausen said, melted iron pipe and puddles of other metals were testimony to temperatures in excess of 5,000 degrees.
The intense probe into HTA fires, unparalleled in the history of arson investigation, has taken researchers outside traditional law enforcement channels to pick the brains of military weapons experts, the best fire scientists and even NASA rocket scientists. So far, no luck.
"The problem with these fires is that nobody knows exactly what the chemical is or who is using it," said Florida's expert on HTA, Lt. Ron McCardle in the Bureau of Arson Investigation of the Florida State Fire Marshal's Office in Tallahassee.
HTA fires "change the rules . . . things happen that you don't expect," McCardle, a 29-year veteran firefighter and arson investigator, said. Fire hot enough to drop the roof of a warehouse in minutes and vaporize half-inch thick steel I-beams, "is something far from the normal fire," McCardle said.
All that can be done in most cases is to surround the building with fountains of water to protect adjoining structures, experts say.
"When you have a fire like that, there's no way of getting inside and putting it out. It's `surround and drown' time," said Joseph Ciepierski, loss control and training manager for Chubb Group, one of the nation's larger fire insurers of commercial buildings.
Most of the MTA fires have been in the Pacific Northwest. Since the HTA spree began in 1984, the Seattle Fire Department and investigators for the Federal Emergency Management Administration have probed 12 HTA fires in Washington, California, Oregon and Canada, with insurance losses of $1 million to $4.5 million per fire. There have been similar fires in Illinois, Pennsylvania and at the Orlando warehouse.
"The word needs to get out that this is a devastating, heinous crime that is facing the fire service," Seattle Fire Chief Claude Harris said. "I can't think of anything in my career that has been this devastating."
After one of Harris' firefighters was killed in a suspected HTA fire in 1989, the department made a 26-minute training video using TV news footage and information from all the suspected HTA fires to date. He wonders what criminal genius baked up HTA, a formula that government experts can't yet duplicate despite years of study.
"This is a cold, businesslike person," Gehlhausen said, "not some wacked-out crazy like a Ted Bundy. It is not his intent to harm anyone, but if someone is harmed . . . to him, they were in the wrong place."
The criminal mind behind HTA seems to have a strong working knowledge of chemistry and structural engineering, The Wall Street Journal reported in a recent story on HTA fires. He may even be an aerospace engineer or former military bomb expert.
The image of his first HTA fire - a San Francisco bay-side warehouse - is an indelible image in Gehlhausen's mind.
"It was incredible," he said. "It was like science fiction.
"I couldn't believe it. And I wouldn't accept the fact that there was such an extraordinary occurrence that could not be explained. Not the federal government . . . not the military, no one could tell us what was causing it."
by CNB