Locals Ask Simple Question: “How Do Fires Start In Downtown Rockford Vacant Buildings?”

Downtown Rockford leaders (lol, wealthy white people with property development interests) have answered a tough, simple, fact-seeking question on the internet, “How do fires start?”  Before we reveal their answer, we have some facts provided to us by the NFPA regarding how fires start in vacant buildings.

The National Fire Protection Association provided this report based on a 2003-2006 Vacant Building Report for Causes of Fires:

• Fires in vacant buildings are more likely to have been intentionally set than other structure fires.
• Forty-three percent of reported vacant building fires during this period were intentionally set, compared to 10% of structure fires overall.
• Vacant buildings accounted for 25% of all intentionally set structure fires.
• Intentional fires were much more common in unsecured vacant properties (57%) than in those that had been secured (31%).
• Other leading causes of vacant building fires were exposure to other fires (8%), heating equipment (also 8%), electrical distribution or lighting equipment (7%), cooking equipment (5%), someone, typically a child, playing with heat source (4%), and smoking materials (3%).
• When equipment is listed as the cause of the fire, it means that the equipment provided the heat that started the fire. It does not mean that the equipment malfunctioned or failed. Hot embers and ashes were the most common heat source in vacant building fires.

Downtown Rockford’s horrific 6/25 event has no cause of why the fire started, and city leaders have decided to bulldoze the remnants of the building.  Since there is no cause, and it’s appearing as if there will be no investigation, lol, can we add MICHAEL’S DRAGON MAGIC FIRE to the list of causes for vacant building fires?  Sure.  In Rockford, just do whatever you want.  No one cares and don’t ask fair questions as simple as:  “How did the fire start?”

A dragon, duh.