Questions Surround Recent House Fire in Murrieta

The smell of fire still lingers over what's left of a Murrieta home, as do questions about how it started and what could have been done differently to save it.

The Murrieta Fire Department was dispatched to the home at 9:13 a.m. Dec. 29 and arrived at 9:20 a.m. After checking the home for signs of smoke or fire for 10 minutes and seeing none, the Fire Department left. They were dispatched back to the home when a neighbor drove by and saw flames coming from the second floor and called 911. 

Homeowners Tyron and Corrine Hinton were visiting family seven hours away in Northern California when Corrine says she checked her cell phone and saw several messages from their home security company, ADT, as well as her neighbor.

"I immediately called my neighbor back and she said 'your house is on fire,'" Corrine said. "And I said 'what did you just tell me?' And she said your whole house is on fire.

"That was probably the most heartbreaking part—hearing that it was burning. That is what was the most difficult. 

"I knew we were coming home. It was: 'get home, get everything in the car. Let's go home.' Because our first impression was our dog—the dog is in the house."

(A neighbor who was pet-sitting came forward with a key and was able to free the dog from the burning home.)

A spokesperson for ADT said they called the homeowner and the Murrieta Fire Department four times between 9:13 a.m. and 9:46 a.m. 

"The fire alarms were never deactivated or reset," said Ken Volpp, of ADT.

The fire, which started in the rear guest bedroom on the home's second floor, caused $250,000 in structural damage. The Hintons add to that the cost of lost belongings, for an estimate of a $500,000 loss.

The Hintons have been forced to go through their belongings to see what is salvageable, which is about 5 to 10 percent, Corrine said, and are now making plans to rebuild while they live in a rental home in the same neighborhood.

"We are trying to save whatever is left, which is not a whole lot," Corrine said. "The second and third floor is done. There is nothing salvageable in the second and third floor of our home. Whatever is left is on the first floor as long as it wasn’t covered in water."

Patch sat down with the Murrieta Fire Department four days after the fire. 

They admitted this was a first for their department—to have considered something a false alarm and then to have this happen.

"There are certainly no secrets," said fire Chief Matt Shobert. "It’s an interesting set of circumstances that created this dilemma. Certainly we don’t like houses to burn and catch fire in our city and we are a little uncomfortable or even sick that it happened but in hindsight we don’t know what we would have done different."

Battalion Chief Steve Kean, a veteran of the department who also does fire investigation, said the cause of the fire was undetermined, but did say it started with a heat lamp for a reptile cage that was in the guest bedroom.

"It is either a malfunction of the heat lamp or the heat from the lamp itself, but whether it fell over, we don’t really know what the circumstances were," Kean said.

Fire Capt. Richard Curran, a 30-year veteran of the department and the one who was in charge of the crew that responded, said there were no visual signs of smoke or fire on their initial visit.

"If there is nobody home, we walk around the outside of the house, we look in all the windows, and look in the vents and in all places we would suspect there would be smoke or something," Curran said.

"We spent 10 minutes—I mean you take that extra time, you look that much harder, just to make sure. That is why you spend that time because I also think when we are sitting there on scene, if something is going on, it gives it time to maybe show itself a little better," Curran said.

"Horrible, I feel terrible," Curran said, about how things turned out. "But I’ve sat down with my crew, we’ve talked about it. If I had that tomorrow I would do the same thing, I don’t really see where we missed a step."

Responding to what often turn out to be false alarms are an almost daily occurrence for the Murrieta Fire Department. They responded to 279 false alarms in 2011, just shy of one a day.

"We go out, we do the visual inspection, and if there is justification to force entry into the house, we will, but if we look into the windows and monitor all the signs, it just doesn’t make financial sense to kick in the front door," Shobert said.

But the Hintons wish they had, and said they are now looking into what legal recourse they may or may not be able to take. 

They question whether the fire started at the lamp, as they said it was plugged in to surge protector and that the bulb was still intact. Their insurance company is conducting its own investigation.

"Our insurance company now has to pay out of pocket for a policy we've been paying into for something that didn’t need to happen.

"It is not about monetary replacement...at the very least, if a policy gets changed, or a set of procedures, so that somebody else doesn’t have to come home to a burned out house."

They would also like to look into the communication between ADT and dispatch.

"Just so that somebody else doesn’t have to do this," she said, motioning to what was left of their house.

"Sure we want to know what transpired so that it can be prevented from happening to someone else. I want to make sure it is safe, I thought it was safe before. We got a security system. We did what we thought we were supposed to do as homeowners."