Did police shut off sprinklers at burning Roseville, California mall? That question is now part of the investigation into the Westfield Galleria standoff.
The Roseville Police Department said it is investigating reports that someone in the department ordered the sprinklers shut off at the Westfield Galleria before a smoldering fire tore through the mall’s roof last Thursday.
FossilMedic Mike Ward must have seen this story coming. This is what he posted at Firegeezer.com as the fire began to take hold of the mall.
And a retired investigator with the California Department of said he clearly heard a radio order to shut off the sprinklers.
“At one point, there was a discussion because of the amount of water flowing out of the building that somebody wanted to shut off the sprinklers,” said the retiree, who asked that only his first name, Ed, be used.
The mall was ordered evacuated shortly after 11 a.m. and the fire allegedly set by Piggee smoldered for more than two hours before flames exploded through the roof.
Firefighters stayed outside while a bomb squad robot searched for a backpack that authorities worried might contain a bomb. The robot and the backpack were both buried in debris when the roof of the mall collapsed.
The 63-year-old retired law enforcement officer and Roseville resident who spent 25 years with the California Department of Justice told News10 he heard scanner traffic on the unified police and fire channel describing efforts to shut down the Galleria’s sprinkler system.
He described what he heard in an email to News10:
Yes, the sprinklers were ordered shut off at the Galleria. In fact, when they found the valve to turn the sprinklers off, it had a sign saying that the valve was broken; consequently they had to go to a secondary valve (which turned off even more sprinkler lines than desired) to turn the water off.
In a telephone conversation, Ed said he was angered by what appeared to be police taking charge of what had become a fire scene. “We never did that. You defer to the fire department. You don’t tell them what to do,” he insisted.
The former special agent also said the decision to shut down the sprinklers had to have come from near the top of the police or fire department command structure.”All the chiefs that were listening heard this come over the radio. Somebody could have interfered and said, no, that’s not a good idea,” he said.
Police spokeswoman Dee Dee Gunther said the role that the SWAT team or other officers played in the unfolding drama was still being examined.
“We don’t have any definite answers,” said Gunther. “We’re looking at the entire timeline of events and at all the building’s features, including the fire protection system.”
Roseville Fire Department Division Chief Dennis Mathisen said possible police involvement in the sprinkler operation was “being injected” into the investigation. “We’ve heard that may have happened. We don’t have specific information on what might have taken place,” Mathisen said.
Mathisen offered no explanation for scanner traffic indicating the sprinklers had been shut down for a period of time and then restarted at the request of firefighters. In fact, he would not confirm that they had been shut down at all. “We have reached no official conclusions that the sprinklers were shut off,” he said.
News10 has made an official request for a copy of police and fire radio traffic during the Galleria response.
The Roseville Police Department was conspicuously absent from a list of 34 agencies that were publicly thanked by Westfield in a full-page ad in Monday’s Sacramento Bee.
Gunther said it was a simple oversight by Westfield. She said Westfield asked her department to compile a list of responding agencies for the newspaper ad and Roseville police left their name off the list because they thought it was self-evident.
“Westfield was mortified (by the omission),” Gunther said.
