No charges against man over devastating Sampson Flat fire in Adelaide Hills
NO criminal charges will be laid against an Adelaide Hills man initially publicly blamed for the devastating Sampson Flat fire in January.
- Picture gallery: See the devastation
- Adelaide Hills man: “I’m just shattered ... thinking that through no fault of my own this has happened.”
- Investigation aftermath: Teenage daughter suffers anxiety after online attacks
- New life appears in the fire zone
NO criminal charges will be laid against an Adelaide Hills man publicly blamed for the devastating Sampson Flat fire in January.
SA Police today announced it had completed its investigation into the cause of the bushfire, which destroyed 24 homes and scorched 12,569ha of land when it ignited on January 2.
It said the inquiry, conducted by Task Force Sampson, had determined the cause of the fire was unknown and could not be proven to be a criminal act.
The investigation focused on an incinerator on a rental property on Shillabeer Rd, which had allegedly been lit before the fire started during a period of extreme fire danger.
Major Crime Investigation Branch Detective Inspector Greg Hutchins said fire and crime scene examiners were confident that, while the fire origin was within, or immediately adjacent to the incinerator, there were a range of possibilities as to its actual cause.
“Despite a complex and exhaustive process, the investigators highlighted a number of possible fire causes such as a smouldering fire from the incinerator; spontaneous combustion of items inside the incinerator or a discarded cigarette butt,” he said.
“At this time no charges will be laid. However, if new information comes to light, police would reconsider the matter.”
The findings exonerate Sampson Flat resident, Nigel, who was accused of lighting the incinerator on a day of extreme fire danger.
Nigel, who asked in January for his surname not be published, emphatically denied he had lit the incinerator on the day of the fire or the weeks leading up to the inferno.
On January 3 - the day after the fire started - he told the Sunday Mail he was devastated that people’s homes had been lost.
Nigel said widespread reports the fire had been ignited by the incinerator were wrong.
He said investigators had identified the ignition point near a broken glass bottle, which he believed had magnified the sun’s rays and caused dry grass to ignite, sparking the bushfire.
“We have been here four months and we have never even used the incinerator since we have been here. There was grass about knee height around it,” he said during an interview at the property.
“We have spent four months tidying up rubbish, bottles and mowing the grass that was left to waste.
“I’ve done cleaning up before bushfire season down there dragging stuff and having little fires burning off all the undergrowth and the rubbish.”
Nigel said catastrophic fire conditions and mismanagement of the property over several years were significant factors contributing to the fire - not any of his personal actions.
He said comparisons with the Ash Wednesday bushfire had left him devastated.
“I’m thinking ‘oh great, it started on our property’, and people have lost their homes and all that is weighing mentally on me at the moment,” he said.
Check out the fire picture gallery.
“I’m just shattered and getting teary thinking that through no fault of my own this has happened.
“I did everything I could.”
In a second interview with The Advertiser in late January, Nigel revealed online trolls were bullying his teenage daughter, saying that her father “deserved a bullet’’ and “should die’’.
He said the vicious attacks had caused stress and hardship for his partner and their four children, aged 6 to 13.
“My daughter is highly anxious and suffering anxiety. She is back to school in five days and we have got people bullying her on social media, saying that I deserve to die or rot in hell. They have said I deserve a bullet for this,” he said.
“I have not done anything and my daughter is feeling the brunt of this. We have four children ... and all of them are weary, we are all weary of this. We are weary of the mental stress.”