LITTLETON, Colo. – The fire that completely destroyed two homes and damaged another last Friday afternoon was caused when a container of rags that had been used to stain a deck ignited in the day’s heat, officials said Monday.
Investigators with Littleton Fire Rescue said that “spontaneous combustion” of those rags on a day when temperatures outside reached 95 degrees caused the fire in the 7900 block of South Bemis Circle in Littleton’s SouthPark neighborhood.
The agency says two of the three houses that suffered damage are “complete losses.”
A woman driving home through the neighborhood told Denver7 she heard an explosion from a natural gas line that had caught fire, and said she then moved neighbors away.
The fire burned for more than an hour, eventually spreading to the third home blocks away when embers from the original fire landed on it.