CHARLESTON, S.C. – The furniture store blaze that killed nine firefighters last week started in the enclosed loading dock, federal investigators said Saturday.

A Sofa Super Store employee told The Associated Press that the area was used for smoke breaks. The Charlotte Observer reported Friday that the structure that enclosed the loading dock at the showroom and warehouse complex on Savannah Highway was built without a building permit some time in the past nine years.

The announcement Saturday by special agent Ken Chisholm of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives ends the on-scene investigation for the agency, which is also trying to find the cause of the fire and piece together events that led to the deaths Monday evening.

Chisholm would not give any details about what might have caused the fire, and would not say in what area of the loading dock the fire started.

Fire experts said the enclosed structure could have made it easier for the fire to spread. If the structure wasn’t built to code, it could have accelerated the blaze.

The owner of the discount furniture store, Herbert Goldstein, has not returned calls to the Observer. He could not be reached at his home Saturday.

The day saw the funerals for six of the nine fallen firefighters. They were spaced throughout the day so the mayor and fire officials could attend each. A fire truck carried each coffin draped in an American flag to the burial site as firefighters in full dress uniforms saluted.

The firefighters died inside the furniture complex, which was completely engulfed in flames. The fire call came in a few minutes past 7 p.m. EDT. The only employee on site was rescued by a separate group of firefighters at the rear of the building.

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Chisholm would not give a fuller timeline of events that led to the tragedy. Investigators have withheld a timeline, saying secrecy is critical to maintaining the integrity of their investigation of the fire.

But Mayor Joe Riley, also at the news conference Saturday, did offer a glimpse into the sequence of events. He said that the firefighters who died already were inside the burning building battling the blaze by the time the employee was located and rescued.

The employee, Jonathan Tyrrell III, told the firefighters who axed through a wall and pulled him out of a smoke-filled workroom at the rear of the building that he was the only one in the complex. Those men, from the nearby St. Andrews department, radioed in the successful rescue.

But it might have been too late. Firefighters who were at the scene told the Observer that the roof collapsed around 8 p.m., and that within 30 minutes of that two men were confirmed dead and five missing.


Riley and other local and federal officials at the news conference would not comment on an Observer report Friday that several firefighters may have gone into the blaze on their own initiative to save comrades in trouble.

That scenario, if confirmed, could explain the number of casualties – the most firefighters lost in a single incident since the Sept. 11 tragedy.

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