Rash of Fires Sparks Suspicion Tuckerman

A number of fires in a small Jackson County town have police and firefighters working overtime. The town of Tuckerman has had six building fires in the last week. Right now, police are only calling them suspicious. While Arkansas State Police are investigating, no one is calling them arson yet. Most of the fires have been set on empty houses or building, two of them around 2:00 Monday morning. But instead of burning just an empty building this time, the fire spread to next door to a home where neighbors were sleeping. Angelo and Dena Villani are making the best of a strange situation. "Do we feel like it was set intentionally?" said Angelo Villani, "Yeah." Monday morning, their neighbor`s grandson woke them up to tell them their house and the one next door were on fire. "I don`t know if he hadn`t woke us up, I don`t know if we`d ever woke up or not," Villani wondered. Fire officials say it started at the house next door, owned by Dena`s mother. Then winds spread the fire to their house. "It was scary, but it happened so fast I didn`t have time to really think about it," said Dena Villani. But in Tuckerman, there seems to be a rash of fires. Last week, flames destroyed another house just around the corner from the Villani`s. Two business and two other empty houses were also destroyed, all by fire, all overnight. "It`s been that way for the last 2 weeks. It`s been devastating here in town, people are afraid to leave their homes and I can understand that," said Tuckerman Mayor Gerald Jackson. But after being forced to leave their homes, the Villanis aren`t letting it worry them anymore. "We`re doing fine. We`re gonna be fine," said Dena Villani. Of the six fires, one of them was a trailer holding offices for Toddy`s Auto Sales and another was the old Police Department building. They had just moved out about five months ago. Meanwhile, some neighbors say they`re thinking about starting a neighborhood watch, just in case.