ATF Investigators Bring Their Skills, Expertise To Help Determine Cause Of American Furniture Fire

ECRU, MISS. (WCBI) – All this week, agents with the ATF’s “National Response Team” have brought their specialized skills to find out what happened Saturday morning at American Furniture’s Ecru plant.

“The NRT is a specialized team comprised of veteran special agents within ATF,but also a whole host of what we call subject matter experts,” said Supervisory Special ATF Agent Dixon Robin.

Those include explosive specialists, certified fire investigators, electrical engineers, chemists, fire protection engineers and other experts.

“We are in the business of investigating these incidents, many times they are not crimes, many times they are accidents, we are here, to assist those agencies, to find those answers as to origin and cause and should it turn out to be a crime, we obviously will assist in follow up investigation as needed until they’re able to work it themselves,” Robin said.

The ATF’s Command Unit is also on site, it’s a mobile office on wheels, with state of the art equipment, everything investigators need to do their job.

“The investigation is a partnership among Pontotoc Sheriff’s Office, State Fire Marshal, Mississippi Highway Patrol ,  Mississippi Bureau of Investigation,  Pontotoc Fire Department and we all have the same seat at the same table, our goal is to have one investigation, one product and one answer,” Robin said.

Agents are also looking at last month’s fire at Washington Furniture in Pontotoc and January’s blaze at American to see if there are any similarities.

There is no timeline on this investigation .  Agents could be on site throughout the rest of the week.