Officials from both departments ruled out any potential accidental cause for the fire, such as faulty utilities, power surges, lighting bolts, cigarettes or candles, said Detective Sgt. Kevin Power, the commanding officer of the Arson and Bomb Squad, days after the fire.
Three teenagers were arrested and charged with fourth-degree arson for setting the fire that burned down the vacant supermarket Nov. 21. Police would not release their names and are identifying them only as two 14-year-olds and one 13-year-old. Investigators said they deliberately set papers on fire and tossed them into a plastic garbage pail.
When they released their findings Nov. 17, investigators described the fire as "suspicious," and said they were awaiting lab results to determine what might have ignited the fire at the former Foodtown on Long Beach Road. Asked on Monday to comment on the cause of the fire, Gene Pietzak, an investigator from the fire marshal's office, said, "The investigation is still ongoing, and I can't really give any more details besides what has been released already."
The day after the fire, Tom McDermott, first assistant chief of the Oceanside Fire Department, said the fire likely started in the rear of the store, behind a wall where the former Foodtown housed its bottle-recycling center.
More than 200 firefighters from 16 Nassau County departments fought the large, intense blaze, which took about five hours to contain and extinguish after the OFD received a call reporting the fire at 3:33 p.m. The following day, the Town of Hempstead's building department declared the structure unsafe, had it demolished and ordered the property owner to secure the site and remove the debris, according to town spokeswoman Susan Trenkel.
Some neighbors of the property claimed they had either seen or heard that kids would break into the vacant supermarket and ride their skateboards inside, since the interior was virtually all wide-open space. Others said that people were trespassing and possibly even living inside the building.
"The rumor around here is that people who were living at the Oceanside Motel went to live there," said one resident. "That's what I heard from a fireman."
The fire came two weeks after the town had demolished the Oceanside Motel, directly across the street, completing its condemnation process of the business after several drug-related arrests and various other illegal activities residents say occurred there over many years.
The town, which was responsible for code enforcement at the vacant building, had received complaints from neighbors about people breaking into the vacant store, Trenkel said. "Our building department had boarded that building up, and there were kids going in there to skateboard," she said. "So the building department had gone down there at a different time and boarded it up when we had been notified."
Asked about the possibility that people were squatting inside, Trenkel said that the Arson and Bomb Squad and fire marshal "would be better able to answer that question."
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