GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Accidental due to unattended cooking. That's what the official report says is the cause of the deadly Summit. Ave. apartment fire on May 12, 2018.
The fire led to the death of five children who were pulled from the apartment building.
PHOTOS: Inside Deadly Summit Ave. Fire
Investigators with The City of Greensboro's Fire Marshal and Fire and Life Safety Division said early on they believed the cause of the fire to be unattended cooking and the official report, released Monday, confirms their findings. The report also shows a first look inside the home after the blaze.
Ken Andrews, an investigator with FORINCON in Raleigh, explains determining the cause of a fire comes down to the scientific theory.
"We’re going to apply the data that we collect within that framework to develop potential hypotheses of where the fire started and ultimately what the cause was," he explains.
Andrews is a former ATF agent and works now to investigate fires and explosions. He was not involved in the Summit Ave. apartment fire investigation, but he could weigh in on what steps investigators typically take in determining the cause of the fire.
" The key is finding the area of origin, because you limit the number of potential ignition sources you have," Andrews explains, noting they look at things like where the fire burned the longest and intensity of the burn to figure out what causes a blaze.
Andrews says kitchen fires will often burn up and out and that there can be evidence based on what's let on the stove.
Investigators in the Summit Ave. case say they were able to trace the origin of the fire to the kitchen. Pictures show the kitchen area, the stove and other parts of the home that were severely burned.
The father of the children killed in the fire told investigators he came home from work around 9:30 p.m. and went to his parents home in another apartment for dinner because they were having issues with the stove. He went home and later went to sleep, saying the next thing he remembered was fire all over the house. The father maintains the family was not cooking on their stove before the fire started. The report says another relative brought a pot of food by earlier in the day.
The report says investigators also talked with ARCO Property Management, who owns the complex. They say there were no complaints about the oven and that any complaints about the apartment had been handled prior to the fire. Investigators say they were able to rule out the stove malfunctioning as a cause of the fire.
In its conclusion, the report explains that "Radiate heat from the operation of the stove ignited organic materials causing a fire. Flames extended vertically from the stove and horizontally across the ceiling until the apartment was consume in an atmosphere that was immediately dangerous to life and health."
The report also shows there were fire alarms in the house, bu they couldn't determine whether or not they were going off when the fire broke out. An inspection into the entire complex after the fire started showed that fire alarms in some of the apartments were not working.
The city of Greensboro is actually condemning the apartments next month, saying they aren't safe to live in. The city and other community organizations are working to relocate the close to 30 families that live in the complex before they have to be out by September 14th.