Fire destroys harbormaster's truck
BY PETER B. BRACE
Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto's brand new 2007 Ford Sport Trac mysteriously caught fire on the night of Oct. 4 in the town pier parking lot.

Interim Fire Chief Mark McDougall said the fire consumed the vehicle's interior, but that he has no leads as to how the fire started and if it was arson.

"As far as a determination on what information we had on seeing what we saw that night, it wasn't necessarily determined as suspicious," said McDougall. "It was interior. It's always hard to determine when it's interior. It could be electrical.

"It's not normally like it has been in the past. Usually if there was an individual out setting fires, there would be two or three of them running around and it didn't feel like that."

Nantucket Police Chief Bill Pittman confirmed that the investigation was ongoing and that the state fire marshal's office was still looking into the fire, but he hinted at the suspicious nature of the incident.

"I think the fire department originally wrote it off as an electrical short, but if that's the case, then there's a lot of activity going on around that car at the time," said Pittman

One possibility could be a faulty cruise control deactivation switch.

The Ford Sport Trac is part of Ford's Explorer line and one of the models included in a recall prior to 2004 when it was discovered that a cruise control deactivation switch situated under the hood on the brakes' master cylinder could cause the Sport Trac to spontaneously ignite, according to www.onlinelawyersource. com.

The switch was designed to remain live even when the ignition was off, but because a thinwalled container holding the brake fluid was prone to breaking down, brake fluid could then come in contact with the cruise control switch and cause a fire.

Onlinelawyersource.com said that Ford stopped using this deactivation switch design as of the 2004 model year, and is currently using a different switch, but it has yet to find the defects in the previous switch that caused it to start fires in vehicles.

Fronzuto, who had purchased the white, fourdoor Sport Trac only a week prior to the fire, said little about the blaze, as he is awaiting what the Nantucket Police and state fire marshal's office uncover. He did say the truck was a total loss and that he is also waiting to hear from his insurance company on whether it will cover the cost of a new vehicle.

I