More federal experts will probe latest Camden fire

Additional federal investigators will join local, state, and county officials probing the third major fire in Camden in 10 days.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' national team of about 20 experts, including forensic chemists, is expected to start work Tuesday at the scene of Sunday's six-alarm fire at a vacant former detergent factory, agency spokesman Chris Bombardiere said.

Some ATF agents already were present Monday as firefighters hosed down hot spots at the former Concord Chemical Inc. factory on the 1600 block of Federal Street, in an industrial neighborhood. The building went up in flames around 5:15 a.m. Sunday.

The three fires - starting with a 12-alarm blaze at a former tire warehouse near the city's Parkside section June 9, and followed two days later by an eight-alarmer at an abandoned garment factory in the Waterfront South neighborhood - has created anxiety among some who live and work in the city, who fear an arsonist may be at work.

"Of course they're suspicious," said Budd Hagelin, owner of Lenola Auto Mall at 16th and Federal Streets.

A spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, which reviewed surveillance video from a business near the Concord site, said Sunday that officials were unsure of the fire's cause but considered it a possible arson.

The ATF spokesman said it was too soon to make a judgment, however.

"This is not a criminal investigation," Bombardiere said. "It's just a fire investigation."

The State Fire Marshal's Arson/K-9 Unit was present Monday at the scene of the third fire. The state Department of Community Affairs would not comment on the agency's investigation, but a state website said K-9s were used to detect accelerants.

The Concord building had been vacant for several years. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency said that it had removed more than 400 drums, pails, and other containers of hazardous chemicals, including hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid, from the site.

The ATF's national response teams are mobilized within 24 hours of major arson and explosive incidents, and were involved in investigations after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, according to the agency.

The federal agency typically offers assistance after large fires and approached Camden authorities, Bombardiere said. It also has offered technical assistance in the investigation into the June 9 fire, he said.

He said the agency activated its national team because of the size of the most recent fire and because of the frequency of the blazes.

Efforts are under way to help victims of the first fire, which destroyed about 23 buildings and leveled nearly two blocks. About 30 residents were displaced in the June 11 fire, but most were able to return to their homes.

One home was evacuated near Sunday's fire, but residents in a block of rowhouses were allowed to stay put. Cathedral Kitchen, a Federal Street nonprofit group that feeds the homeless and whose building is a block from the fire site, was closed Monday after authorities shut portions of the street, according to a recording on its voice mail.

Camden officials have established a relief fund at PNC Bank branches in New Jersey and Philadelphia for victims of the first two fires.

The District Council Collaborative Boards, a citywide group of volunteer groups, will hold a beef and beer fund-raiser to help the victims on Thursday from 4 to 8 p.m. at St. Bartholomew Roman Catholic Church, 751 Kaighns Ave.

A veteran Camden city firefighter who belongs to one of the first companies that responded June 11 at Waterfront South said Monday that it was "strange" how quickly the fire moved.

By the time a ladder truck was set up on Winslow Street, the flames had ripped through to Fourth Street, according to the firefighter, who did not want to have his name used because he is not authorized to speak to reporters.

When another ladder truck set up on Fourth, the fire had moved on to Jefferson Street, he said.

"They used something in there," he said. In "less than a half-hour, the whole building was gone."