'No doubt' four county fires deliberately set
Published Friday July 3rd, 2009
Arson 13 vehicles at auto garage, cabin, house and car stolen from fire chief all set ablaze
ST. STEPHEN - One or more arsonists left a trail of mayhem and disgust across the western half of Charlotte County late Wednesday and early Thursday.
The RCMP has no doubt that the same person or people set all four fires - including stealing and then burning Rollingdam Fire Chief Ivan Noddin's car while they were at it.
"There's no doubt," Const. John Beck said Thursday afternoon, surveying a pile of ashes and twisted bed frames, all that remained of the newest cabin at Camp Waweig.
"We're following up on any leads."
The cabin contained camping equipment, including items that would have been used for a camp set to start Monday, St. Croix Estuary Project executive director Kim Reeder said. "Everyone in the community would have known it as the nurse's cabin."
The arsonists apparently burned the cabin on their way from torching an unoccupied farm house at Waweig, on their way to setting fire to about 13 vehicles parked outside an automotive garage at Oak Bay before moving on to Rollingdam.
A neighbour reported seeing or hearing, at about 1 a.m., a vehicle entering and then leaving Camp Waweig, a former church youth camp that the St. Croix Estuary Project acquired in 2005.
However, nobody discovered the fire until Bill McAllister, a St. Croix Estuary Project director, visited the camp at about 2 p.m., Reeder said.
Insurance will not cover the loss, Reeder said. She was uncertain about the camp set to start Monday.
As it unfolded the previous night, the story began when the Oak Bay, Rollingdam and St. Andrews fire departments responded to an emergency call at about 11:30 to an unoccupied house burning at Waweig near the intersection of Highways 1 and 127 - across the Waweig River from the youth camp.
Richard Bellis, who grew up in the house, moved to St. Stephen last fall but was still moving his possessions from the old family home, Richard's father Stephen Bellis said at the site late Thursday afternoon. The house was 130 to 150 years old.
The firefighters were on their way home when the alarm sounded again at 2:50 a.m. Cars were burning at an automotive garage on the Tower Hill Road at Oak Bay. Owner Daniel Higgins said someone called him at home in St. Stephen at about 3:15 a.m.
"I think they were trying to steal a car and couldn't and they got ugly, I guess," Higgins said Thursday.
The would-be thieves hit the side of the garage with a four-wheel-drive Ford half-ton truck that Higgins planned to fix up to plow snow. Another vehicle blocked the path to get the truck out.
About 13 vehicles burned, including ones he had fixed up and had sales for, others that he repaired and was waiting for the owners to come and get. Some were "parts cars," one had 20 good tires stored in it. He could not afford insurance for vehicles parked outside, said Higgins, who also drives a school bus.
The Oak Bay, Rollingdam and St. Stephen fire departments responded to the garage conflagration, which Higgins said would have set the woods alight had everything not been so wet.
With this situation under control the very tired Rollingdam crew headed home at about 4 a.m., Fire Chief Noddin said.
When he got to back to the fire hall, his car was gone. "I first got here and figured the wife went there and took it," he said in an interview Thursday - but no such luck. Someone gave him a drive home to Clarence Ridge.
He had left the keys on the console of the 2007 Pontiac Vibe before leaving with the crew on the truck for the Waweig fire because he could not get them into the pocket of his fire gear.
At about 7 a.m. the Elmsville Fire Department responded to an emergency call about a vehicle burning on the Old Quarry Road leading from Highway 760 to Digdeguash Lake - it was Noddin's car. The flames were mostly out by the time the firefighters got there, Fire Chief Eugene Gowan Jr. said Thursday evening.
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