Trail RCMP and firefighters are trying to figure out why someone would set fire to an already burnt building.
After a fire on Railway Lane was extinguished early Tuesday morning, firefighters returned late Tuesday night to douse yet another blaze at the same house.
“We were called back to the scene last night but the cause is still under investigation,” said deputy fire chief Dan Derby of Regional Fire Rescue.
RCMP arrested a man from the earlier blaze and charged him with arson but is stymied by the second blaze.
“It’s definitely suspicious, I have no doubt that it’s been caused by somebody else,” said RCMP Sgt. Rob Hawton. “We do have a guy in custody from the night before so I can definitely say that he didn’t do it . . . but what would be the motive for burning a burnt building?”
An earlier fire ripped through a duplex in the Gulch at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning and crews were on site most of the day investigating the cause only to be called back around 10 p.m.
While Derby could not speculate on the cause of the later fire he did say that the original fire had been extinguished.
“We’d left it in a safe manner, the fire was out when we left, the building had been boarded up and turned over to the insurance company.”
The significant blaze kept two crews and 25 firefighters from Warfield and Trail at the scene for four hours.
The insurance company brought in its own investigator and will have security on site to monitor the area for at least the night, said Derby.
Firefighters are working with RCMP to investigate the suspicious blaze.
“Our feeling is that it’s not a rekindle but it’s something we take very serious and we are very concerned about and that’s why we’re trying to determine the cause so we can definitively say that.”