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WALTHALL, Miss.— The mystery as to how the blaze that completely destroyed the building is now solved.
News Mississippi caught up with Jimmy Forrester, a local fire fighter who fought the fire along with several other crews from the area.
“We now know it was a power strip on the first floor, in an office on the southwest corner of the building that started the fire.”
He says the state fire marshal has now declared that the official reason behind the demise of the courthouse which was built in 1915.
Forrester added arson has clearly been ruled out, “There’s no suspicion in the cause of the fire.”
Now the attention of local officials turns to the records that were stored inside the building in various places like the vault. It is still being determined how many records were destroyed.
Forrester says they are waiting on a container to arrive from the coast of Mississippi to help with storing documents that are left.
“This container was used after Hurricane Katrina to freeze dry those records. We’re using it so we won’t lose them.”
He also says that computer hard drives that weren’t completely destroyed are being looked as also a possibility to recover documents that might have otherwise been lost.
