Yonkers firefighters responding to an early morning blaze at a single-family home early Sunday morning found the house unoccupied except for four bedrooms packed with growing marijuana plants, some six feet tall. Nobody was inside the house, which Assistant Fire Chief George Kielb says "looked like a normal home from the outside. But all the windows were covered with plywood and the top floors were just filled with pot." Firefighters worked for three hours before the well-packed blaze was finally cashed, and by that time the two top floors were gutted and the roof was partially destroyed.
Kielb speculates the fire was started after electrical wires inside a second-floor wall overheated. It's a common problem faced by illegal marijuana growers; if you use too much electricity to power the lamps for the hydroponic growing system, the high electric usage could tip off investigators. So in this case, the electrical lines had been diverted around the home's meter box thus preventing utility officials from tracking the high power usage, Lohud.com reports. But rerouting electrical wires comes with its own risks, which may explain why more New Yorkers are simply growing their weed in city parks.
