Cause of fire a mystery

ROCKFORD - No new details have emerged about last week's fire that ravaged through and reduced two historic buildings to blackened ruins on North Main Street.

"Everything is kind of hush-hush. We have not heard anything," said Rockford Village Administrator Aaron Temple following Tuesday night's regular council meeting. "We're just hoping that once everything gets settled out that (DJ's Auto Repair owner) Doug (Hole) puts a new building up. Because everybody's going to miss him, if not."

The same was the case at the state level.

"The Rockford fire remains an ongoing investigation. The cause of the fire is currently undetermined," said Ohio Department of Commerce Public Information Officer Andy Ellinger on Tuesday, adding he had no additional details to share at this time.

The State Fire Marshal Fire and Explosion Investigation Bureau has "an active and ongoing investigation" into the fire, Ellinger said last week.

The FEIB's mission is to investigate fires of a suspicious nature, suspected arson, bombings and any other associated crimes and assist with the prosecution of those responsible for incidents determined to be criminal in nature, according to the bureau's website.    Dozens of firefighters from 12 departments in two counties on March 1 battled the blaze for 10 hours and at one point exhausted the town's water supply and had to draw from the St. Marys River and a nearby creek.

No one was injured in the inferno but two buildings housing DJ's Auto Repair and Wildfire Bar and Grill on North Main Street were decimated by flames.

The fire started in Wildfire Bar and Grill but its cause is unknown, Rockford Fire Chief Rob Belna Belna had said.

Village officials briefly acknowledged the fire at Tuesday's council meeting. Council president Ron Searight in his opening prayer thanked God for the firefighters, business owners and others who helped at the scene.

Mayor Amy Jospeh also commended the same people for their efforts.

"Everything went like clockwork, I think, for what they had to deal with," she said.

Temple said the fire raised some questions at the water treatment plant, spurring officials to review plant design records and specifications.

"It looks like both of our high service pumps are in need of being serviced … and gone through," he said.

"At high end we can produce about 300 gallons a minute and looking at the pump curves in the design we should be pumping closer to 400, maybe a little over 400 gallons a minute," Temple said.

A company will be brought in to pull out, service and clean one pump at a time, he said.

"Now that being said, the amount of water that they (firefighters) were pulling out of our system, that 100 gallons a minute was nothing. They were pumping over 5,000 gallons a minute," Temple said.

Belna had said each of the 12 fire departments assisting came with tankers.

"We depleted the water supply in town in the towers so we had to shuttle water from the river and the creek east of town so that's why we had so many tankers," he had explained. "We did pretty good. We had enough tankers that we were able to shuttle and the guys on the bridge did an excellent job of filling them and filling them quick."

Temple said officials have contacted the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency about adding a dry hydrant to pond No. 3 at the wastewater treatment plant. The pond contains 5 to 6 million gallons of water that could be tapped by firefighters.

"Since we revamped the wastewater treatment plant that pond basically is nothing but a holding pond," Temple said, noting it's bypassed 90% of the time.

Village officials are also considering installing a dry hydrant at a park pond.

"Unfortunately you don't think of a lot of those things until you need them and then they're not there," he said.