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Tyree: 11 fire deaths in 14 days in West Virginia

LOGAN, W.Va. –State Fire Marshal Ken Tyree says that in the last 14 days there have been 11 fire fatalities in the Mountain State.

Six of those deaths in the past week.

Ken Tyree (File)

He says that it is normal to see an uptick in fires between November through February and that there are different reasons as to what causes the rise in fires throughout these months.

“Then there’s a lot of obvious reasons for it but sometimes you know you have preventable and sometimes unpreventable fires, so it varies,” Tyree said on Talkline Tuesday morning.

The last fire fatality was in West Logan at an apartment building Monday morning.

Tyree says that the building was fully involved when crews arrived on scene.

“Fully involved, and on arrival they already had a partial roof collapse, so there was many on scene. I had one lone occupant to one of the units that unfortunately lost his life there,” he said.

The only information he released about the victim was that he was 52 years old.

Tyree urges residents to help make sure everyone is safe, even your older neighbors because five out of the 11 fire deaths the victims have been 70-years-old and above and nine out of the 11 fire deaths the victims have been 60 or above.

“The reality of it is we’ve got to have operating smoke alarms, we got to have a plan, and we’ve just got to help each other stay safe and fire safe in the winter and throughout the year,” he said.

Tyree said that with the fully involved building that they encountered, it caused the crews to have to battle the flames from the exterior instead of going inside.

He also said that as of right now, there is no known cause of the fire.

“Still investigating, still trying to conduct some interviews, and still trying to look at some of the physical evidence that may be there,” Tyree said. “At this time, it’s undetermined but we’ll see if time goes on if we can make a clear determination on the origin and cause of the fire.”

Tyree said investigators don’t suspect arson or that any other incendiaries were involved.





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