"On duty at the Courthouse that night was forty-year-old Mathias Schaffer. Schaffer was showing some visitors
around the tower when one of them pointed to smoke in the distance. Schaffer glanced at the smoke, but dismissed
the sighting. It was just the smoldering embers from the previous night's fire, he assured them. Nothing to worry
about."
"Several minutes passed before Schaffer looked up from what he was doing and saw flames leaping wildly into the
black sky. The light was from a different fire after all; he'd been fooled because this new blaze was almost directly
behind the still-flickering remnants of the Saturday October 7 fire."
What was the effect of Schaffer dismissing the sighting of smoke?