Violations Didn’t Cause Deaths

The deaths of four firefighters cannot be blamed on safety-rule violations by the Seattle Fire Department, the head of the state’s workplace safety agency is advising authorities in Brazil.

Martin Pang, charged with arson and four counts of first-degree murder in the Jan. 5 fire at his parent’s food-products warehouse here, fled to Rio de Janeiro after the blaze. He was arrested there in March.

Mark Brown, director of the Department of Labor and Industries, says he’s concerned that Pang’s attorneys in Rio are misrepresenting his agency’s findings.

In a July 13 affidavit obtained by the Post-Intelligencer, Brown said that while some safety rules were breached, Labor and Industries “has not found that the deaths of these firefighters are ‘due to’ or as a result of these safety rule violations.”