Fire investigators warn of the dangers of improperly installed wood-burning stoves - Michigan News, Updates, Photos & Video | Detroit, Lansing - MLive.com
VANDALIA -- A Michigan State Police investigator who has probed three fatal house fires this year sparked by wood-burning stoves said residents should always have the devices installed and regularly maintained by a professional to ensure safety.
Two young brothers in Cass County who perished Monday in a fire Monday morning were the fourth and fifth person this year in southwestern Michigan to die in a fire that Sgt. Scott LeRoy has determined was caused by a wood stove. LeRoy said improper installation or maintenance is often a factor when wood stoves are to blame for a blaze.
I think one of the contributing factors with these (recent fires) is ... homeowners or friends are installing or reinstalling wood stoves and chimneys and, quite frankly, making errors," LeRoy said.
For example, the sergeant said a recently installed wood stove that sparked a Feb. 16 fire in Delton and killed 35-year-old Jason Hoffman had been improperly placed on a wood floor instead of a non-combustible surface such as bricks. A new stove was also blamed for a Feb. 10 fire that killed 84-year-old Grace Bower and her son, Donald Bower, 60, at their Burr Oak home.
In the fire Monday that killed 6-year-old Dale Baldwin and 13-year-old Scott Baldwin, LeRoy said a wood stove that was used as a primary heat source "most likely" was the cause.
He said the boys' father, Leonard Baldwin had recently performed some maintenance on the stove's chimney, but Tuesday police did not know if those improvements were a contributing factor in the wood stove igniting the blaze.
Brad Friedt, owner of Friedt Enterprises in Kalamazoo, which specializes in wood stove sales and maintenance, said homeowners should have the pipes of their wood stove and chimney checked monthly and cleaned yearly. Friedt said the most common issue his company finds during wood stove inspections is improper clearance around stove and chimney pipes.
In some instances, he said company officials have inspected stoves where chimney pipes traveling through a ceiling of a home butt up against wood in the attic area and present a potential fire hazard.
Friedt said pipe traveling from a stove up to a ceiling should have an 18-inch clearance all around and a two-inch clearance is needed from where pipe travels from the ceiling through a home's rooftop.
The fire Monday gutted most of the house at 60969 Storey Road. Penn Township firefighters responded to the blaze at about 12:25 a.m. and found Dale and Scott dead inside after extinguishing the flames.
Leonard Baldwin, his girlfriend Billie Jo Allen and six other children made it out of the house safely. Alyia Baldwin, 7, was flown to Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, where she was listed in good condition Tuesday morning.
LeRoy said the family slept in the single-story portion of the house where the wood stove was located. Dale and Scott were found by firefighters in the dining room of the house, which adjoined to the living room where they slept, he said.
By the time one of the Baldwin children spotted the fire early Monday, LeRoy said "the fire was already well involved" and family members who made their way to safety "barely got out."
LeRoy said police found one to two smoke detectors in the house, but none had batteries. He said police continue to investigate the blaze, but have no indications of anything suspicious and plan to close the investigation, pending the results of autopsies of Dale and Scott.
