Tenants noticed circuit troubles before Burnsville fire

In the weeks before a Dec. 22 fire destroyed a Burnsville apartment building, tenants had noticed signs of malfunctioning electrical circuits -- a problem that experts say could increase the risk of fire.

Tenants noticed the circuit problems in the building's newly remodeled laundry rooms. The third-floor laundry room is where the first 911 caller reporting the fire described smoke, according to emergency dispatchers. That's where police and firefighters first reported seeing smoke, as well, the city has said.

Former tenants Tammy Brynteson and Jackie Weller said that since soda vending machines were installed in the laundry rooms a few weeks ago, dryers would take money and then shut off when a circuit breaker tripped. They are among more than a half-dozen former residents who say they noticed the problem.

Fire officials, who continued to probe the fire scene Tuesday, will not publicly discuss a possible cause of the blaze that displaced almost 200 residents of the Burncliff Apartments near Hwy. 13 three days before Christmas and destroyed most of their belongings. But Brynteson, Weller and other tenants say their suspicions are focused on the laundry rooms on the second and third floors.

Minnesota state Fire Marshal Jerry Rosendahl said that tripped circuit breakers can be a symptom of a circuit overload or a short circuit, and repeatedly forcing circuits back on can be dangerous.

Weller, who lived on the second floor of the building that burned, said that at least two times in recent weeks, she had tried to use a dryer but it shut down shortly after starting. The same thing happened two or three times to a woman who lived across the hall, Weller said.

Each time she'd encounter the problem, Weller said, she would contact the management, and a maintenance worker would do something -- presumably flip a circuit-breaker switch -- to get the dryer to work, Weller said. That maintenance worker pulled the plug on the new soda machine after the last time, Weller said.

In the other building in the complex, which was not damaged by the fire, the same type of 220-volt dryer was shutting down in one laundry room, which also had been remodeled a few months back, said Randy Duncan, a former maintenance worker for Burncliff. He was laid off Dec. 2.

"Every time somebody used the dryer, it'd go for about 30 minutes and flip off," Duncan said Tuesday. "So we finally put it out of order to figure out what was going on."

Frank French, chief operating officer for the Goodman Group, which manages the Burncliff complex, on Tuesday said he had been unaware of the circuit problem. French speculated that a tenant plugging in an iron or a steamer in the laundry room could have caused overloading.

Carlos Pinones, 21, also lived in the building that was destroyed. He said that in the past few weeks he'd repeatedly see signs posted in the third-floor laundry room by the building management, advising tenants that a dryer was out of order. His mother, Maria Aguilar, and Weller also told of washing machines not functioning properly on the second and third floors. And Weller saw such a sign up a couple days before the fire, she said.

Rosendahl, the state fire marshal, said forcing tripped circuit breakers to continue working could cause a fire, and to continue flipping them ignores the root cause. Powering them back up could cause heat to build up or another problem, he said.

"Not heeding the warning signs of repeated tripping of the breaker, that's just asking for trouble," he said. "In my simple layman's terms, it's a warning system that there's something potentially not right. You really need to call an electrician to figure out the problem."

Meanwhile, the origin and cause of the fire remain under investigation by the Burnsville Fire Department, said local Fire Marshal Doug Nelson. He declined to comment on the investigation, including whether electrical wiring could have started the fire, until the investigation is complete.

That meticulous work could take weeks or months, said Burnsville city spokesman Jim Skelly on Tuesday, because ice has formed over the heavily damaged structure -- which may now need shoring up to prevent it from collapsing.

The blaze had chased tenants from many of the 61 occupied apartments into sub-zero temperatures and wiped out much of what they owned. Nobody was injured. Last week, an anonymous donor gave $1 million to displaced families, and the apartment management and other donors chipped in tens of thousands more. The money was distributed on Christmas Eve.

Tuesday, Skelly said some tenants' belongings on the first and second floors may be recovered. Initially, officials had said the tenants lost everything in the fire.