This photograph was taken by a neighbor early in March after a house fire was reported in the 900 block of Ham Hill Road. Three children were unable to escape and perished in the blaze.
The Centralia Police Department announced Friday that the cause of a March 4 house fire that killed three Centralia children was accidental in nature.
“There is no indication this fire was set intentionally by anyone,” Centralia police Detective Dave Clary wrote in his report.
While investigators believe the fire was accidental, the official cause of the fire that killed Ben Tower, 12, Maddy Tower, 10, and Sam Tower, 7, is classified as “undetermined,” because investigators can’t pin down the exact cause.
“It’s frustrating when you can’t make an ultimate determination, not just for yourself but I’m sure the family would like an ultimate determination as well,” Centralia Police Cmdr. Patrick Fitzgerald told The Chronicle. “It’s sad all the way around for everybody.”
Investigators believe the fire could have been caused either by a compact fluorescent light bulb that malfunctioned, or a “spontaneous combustion of oily towels.”
Recently laundered oily towels were in a crate by the front door, near where the fire likely started, according to the Centralia Police Department.
Investigators determined that day that the fire started a few feet away from the home’s front door.
On April 29, Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod announced that the children died of asphyxiation from smoke inhalation.
The Centralia Police Department released documents associated with the investigation Friday.
Fire crews and police responded at 12:45 a.m. March 4 to the fire, in the 900 block of Ham Hill Road. The children’s mother, Sue Tower, who survived, reported she was not able to reach the children in another part of the house.
The police report includes a description of the 911 call Tower made, in which she reportedly was screaming, sobbing and begging dispatchers to hurry.
When police arrived, they found Tower outside the house on the phone.
She reported that the fire was in the kitchen, and that her children were in upstairs bedrooms. She later told investigators she was trying to find a way into the upper part of the house to get the kids and had opened multiple exterior doors
The fire was venting out multiple windows, according to reports.
Centralia Police officers Ruben Ramirez and Philip Weismiller were the first on scene.
The officers immediately started trying to find a way to get to the kids’ rooms in the home’s third floor above the garage.
“We could feel the heat from the fire,” Ramirez wrote in his report.
Weismiller stood on Ramirez’ shoulders to get above the garage to the roof next to the childrens’ windows.
Weismiller broke the window, but the heat from the room blew the glass outward, badly cutting two of his fingers.
At that point, fire crews arrived and started spraying water on the house.
Ramirez noted in his report that Sue Tower seemed to be “in a daze” as firefighters began attacking the fire.
“I noted that she was fully dressed and I thought it odd due to the fact that it was 0100 in the morning,” he wrote.
Firefighters made continued attempts to reach the children.
Tower later told police she tried to reach the kids, then put on jeans and a sweatshirt because she thought it would help with the heat.
The children’s father, Brad Tower, who lived in Olympia, arrived shortly after.
Officer Angie Humphrey wrote in her report that both parents were emotional and in shock during the initial response to the fire.
Sue Tower reportedly told Humphrey she didn’t hear a smoke detector, but was awakened by a banging or cracking sound in the kitchen, and woke to see the fire outside her bedroom door.
During interviews with investigators, Sue Tower said the fire alarm in the kitchen had recently begun beeping, indicating that it needed a new battery, and said she took the battery out and put it on the counter, but didn’t immediately replace it.
She reported that she didn’t know if there were smoke alarms upstairs and hadn’t checked them.
During the investigation, she told police a burner on the stove sometimes stuck in the on position, and that it might have started the fire. She later told The Chronicle she believed an electrical problem started the fire.
Brad Tower told investigators his ex-wife did occasionally leave burners on, but said he did not believe she would do anything to intentionally hurt her children.
While Tower initially told investigators she had not been drinking, they reportedly smelled wine on her breath and saw it on her lips.
Tower later admitted she was drinking wine the night of the fire. Clary asked her why she lied.
“Suzanne told me she was afraid of what her ex-husband would do because of his opinion toward drinking and toward her,” Clary wrote.
The Towers had recently divorced and had a difficult relationship, according to the report.
Clary’s report unequivocally clears Sue Tower as a suspect.
“Suzanne was present at the time of the fire and was in great danger of perishing herself. Nothing in her actions or behavior prior to the fire gave any indication that she was homicidal toward the children,” Clary wrote. “The intense emotion that Suzanne displayed on her 911 phone call indicated a clear concern for the children. …”
Photos released with the report show much of the house was completely gutted by the fire.
Detectives began arriving at about 1 a.m., at which point the fire was nearly out.
Investigators interviewed several people and, according to documents from the investigation released Friday, investigators seized a number of items from the home as part of their investigation, including liquid from a cast iron pot, fasteners, hinges, drawer runners, a capacitor found in the front room, a blender cord and base, two lamp bases and a beer growler.
The investigation revealed that several breakers on the home’s electrical panel were tripped.
They also took samples of lint from a dryer as evidence.
According to the investigation, firefighters and police did not see anything suspicious inside or around the home.
Investigators later determined the fire likely started in an area a few feet from the home’s front door.
“The area that appeared to have suffered the most damage and thus has been subjected to the most heat and fire for the longest time was in the living room just inside the front door to the residence,” Clary wrote in his report. “The ceiling and roof above the living room had collapsed and fallen in at that point and the front door was totally gone.”
Investigators focused their attention on that portion of the home, starting with electrical sockets. They began looking for burn patterns that could lead them toward the cause of the fire.
“The burn/char patterns on the wall did not radiate away from either of these outlets but rather they moved toward them,” Clary wrote. “The fact that the burn pattern did not move away from the outlets was an indication that the fire did not originate in either of these outlets.”
Investigators began the difficult task of sifting through the debris.
“This area was a mess of roofing shingles, debris from the ceiling and the remains of furniture and appliances that had been in this area at the time of the fire,” Clary wrote.
He noted that the oven was so badly damaged he could not tell if the knobs were in the “on” or “off” position.
They also learned that lamps near the origin of the fire likely had CFL bulbs, which occasionally malfunction and cause fires, Clary wrote.
They also found a metal candle stand, the remains of a lamp, a hotel pan and a burned up extension cord and mostly burned towels mixed with melted plastic.
“The significance of these towels and plastic were not recognized until later and so they were set aside during the initial dig out,” Clary wrote.
Lab reports later showed that the towels had the remains of vegetable oils.
“The fatty acid composition detected in the extract from items 6, 7, 8 and 9 are in relative amounts similar to substances exhibiting a low to moderate tendency toward self-heating,” the report states. “However, laundered cloth material may be subject to spontaneous heating and ignition with the addition of heat from drying if not all oils are adequately removed and poor dissipation of the heat occurs.”
The report also states that the source of the vegetable oil or fats could not be determined.
Clary wrote that the towels seem to be the best answer for the cause of the fire, but said investigators couldn’t rule out the possibility of a light bulb malfunction.
