Crescent City Fire and Rescue Chief Bill Gillespie says arson may be to blame for a fire that gutted the inside of an unoccupied home on the 200 block of East Essex Street late Tuesday.

Firefighters could see flames before they arrived on scene at about 11 p.m., Gillespie told the Wild Rivers Outpost. The house is still standing, but the interior sustained heavy damage.

According to Gillespie, crews from Crescent City Fire and Rescue, CalFire and Pelican Bay State Prison’s fire department, knocked had the fire knocked down by about 11:40 p.m.

“Pretty much every room in the house had a fire in it and it wasn’t a result of fire spread throughout the house,” he said. “You could tell the fire had been set in the middle of various rooms.”

It was the second time that day Crescent City Fire and Rescue responded to a fire at that home, Gillespie said. At about 8:37 a.m. Tuesday firefighters found an occupant in the house trying to use a wood stove with no front door on it, he said.

Fire was pouring out of the stove and onto the floor and because the occupant refused to leave, the Crescent City Police Department took him into custody, Gillespie said. Though he was booked into the jail on Tuesday morning, the occupant was released later in the day, Gillespie said.

“He was told multiple times to get out of the house and was very lethargic, not moving, that kind of thing,” Gillespie told the Outpost. “He didn’t seem to have what you would consider the cognitive ability to realize, ‘The house is on fire, I need to get out.’ I don’t know whether it was under the influence of drugs or alcohol or what it might have been.”

According to Gillespie, there was evidence of transient activity at the house. He said there was a lot of garbage and junk inside the home along with broken windows and doors and kicked in sheet rock.

Though firefighters couldn’t detect an accelerant because of the extent of the fires, Gillespie said there was enough available material for the second fire to have been intentionally started.

According to Gillespie, though the occupant he encountered at the home during his department’s first visit had been released from police custody, CCPD will try to question the individual to see if they could get any leads into who may have been responsible for the second fire.

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