A document from the Santiago Fire Department ruled out the fire of the Alameda Art Center of 27 December 2019 – which occurred in the context of the protests resulting from the social outburst – was caused by a tear bomb.
“It was not possible to find evidence to ensure that the cause of the fire that affected the property is a tear bomb,” the document says, after a perm that reconstructed the events of that day of protests was carried out.
While the report – to which El Mercurio agreed – argues that while they were found as a tear bomb, they were not located in the “focal zone”.
In that line, the document states that the person responsible was “a temperature-bearing object sufficient to ignite materials accumulated in the water evacuation gutters that falls on the roof generating the first flames”.
According to the morning, Firefighters argued that there are “no signs of internal overheating resulting from some failure in the electrical system”. In addition, they noted that “there is also no presence of any object, whether own or outside the place, that allows to determine the caloric source that initiates the fire”.
Finally, the document determined that the first objects that began to burn are “garbage accumulated in the water drainage gutters”, and that in addition, the presence of pigeons and the marks of fecas in the gutters would have been the “combustible material for the start of the fire.”
