Four recent house fires in Johnny Cash’s boyhood town of Dyess have driven local authorities to increase patrols of the small Mississippi County town and have spurred Arkansas State University officials to closely watch their renovation project at the country singer’s childhood home.
Authorities suspect arson could be the cause of at least three of the fires.
Three of the houses that were destroyed by fire in the past several months were vacant and had no electricity, said Capt. Robb Rounsavall of the Mississippi County sheriff’s office. The fourth fire was in a vacant home that was undergoing renovations, he said.
The fire in the renovated home may have been caused by lightning, he said. Three of the four homes were not insured, he said.
“It doesn’t make sense to burn vacant houses,” Rounsavall said.
Authorities reported the first fire on Oak Street in Dyess at 1:30 a.m. on Feb. 24. Several people told investigators they heard an explosion and saw the house in flames as a red Ford Mustang was driving away from the residence.
A second house burned on Mississippi County Road 139 at 9:40 p.m. on March 5.
A third fire was reported at 6:36 p.m. April 22 at the intersection of Arkansas 77 and West County Road 956. Two days later, a fourth fire gutted a vacant home on Arkansas 14 in Dyess at 2:10 a.m.
On Monday, the state fire marshal and members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives inspected the fire scenes, Rounsavall said. Teams also used scent-detecting dogs to determine if any accelerants were used to ignite the fires. Rounsavall said he had not received information on their investigation as of Monday afternoon.
Dyess Mayor Larry Sims said he has driven around his town of 410 people late at night, looking for any suspicious activities since the fires began.
“These were at vacant houses,” Sims said. “People here aren’t too worried about their homes burning. They’re going about their business. But they’re watching for anything.”
Ruth Hawkins, director of the Arkansas Heritage Sites at Arkansas State University, said workers installed security cameras at the boyhood home of Johnny Cash as they began renovating the structure.
“We have cameras all around the property,” she said. “If someone came to set a fire, we’d see it.”
The university acquired the home in 2009 from the city of Dyess and has done extensive work to convert it into a museum. Hawkins said workers have a few minor jobs left on the exterior of the small, white, single-story home. Hawkins will soon work with Cash family members to obtain furnishings that reflect the period when Cash lived there.
Cash’s family moved to Dyess Colony, an agricultural resettlement community created by the Works Progress Administration, in 1934, when Johnny Cash was 3 years old. The singer lived there until he graduated from Dyess High Schoolin 1950.
Hawkins is also overseeing a restoration project of the Dyess Colony Administration building in the heart of the town.
“I hope it’s over,” Sims said of the fires. “I hope someone brags about setting them to someone who then calls the police and we can get this solved.”
In the meantime, Sims said, he and Mississippi County deputies will continue patrolling the town.
“It is suspicious that three houses burned with no electricity and no insurance,” he said. “We’ll be out there watching.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/30/2013