Eight months after Buffalo Firefighter Jason Arno died inside a burning Theatre District building, his widow has filed a lawsuit against the City of Buffalo, the Buffalo Fire Department, the company that owned the building and the contractor doing masonry work with a blowtorch on the building when the fire started.
In the 30-page lawsuit filed Wednesday in Erie County Supreme Court, Sarah-Elizabeth Tierney’s attorneys laid out a long list of failures they said caused Arno’s death inside 743 Main St., a three-story brick building that housed a costume shop, on March 1.
In July, a federal fire investigation concluded that the massive blaze was started when two contractors were using a blowtorch and a leaf blower to melt ice and snow away from the exterior of the building. A spark from the blowtorch got inside a doorframe that had been boarded up with plywood and ignited a fire in bags of costumes that were stored inside, it concluded.
Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said then that the actions of the workers were “stupid” but “not criminal” and that no criminal charges would be filed.
The civil lawsuit said Arno died an agonizing and terrifying death alone inside the burning building. He “suffered conscious pain and suffering, pre-death terror and fear of impending death, as well as serious and grave bodily injuries,” the court documents said.
He left behind his wife, Tierney, and their daughter, Olivia, now 4.
The building, now razed to the ground, was owned by a company run by former Congressman Chris Jacobs.
According to the complaint filed by attorney Charles S. Desmond II, of Gibson, McAskill & Crosby, workers with JP Contracting, which specializes in masonry work, were using a propane tank with an attached propane torch and a leaf blower and that caused the fire to start between 7:25 a.m. and 8:35 a.m. The lawsuit accuses their employer of “negligence, carelessness and recklessness.”
The contractor…
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