Watch Video of Fire Marshal Cecelia Cloos

Five minutes into her inspection, Hopkinsville Fire Marshal Cecelia Cloos is joking with The Princess Theater manager Michael Grise. The theater has scheduled a comic hypnotist, Grise said. He invites Cloos to be one of the subjects on stage.

“I’ll come watch,” Cloos shoots back. “But you’re not getting me up there.”

The kidding continues as Cloos measures seating areas and notes emergency lighting and exit points. The theater’s upper levels can safely accommodate 63, she finally determines.

Cloos, pronounced “close,” makes safety with a smile look easy.  Grise did not protest the fire marshal’s orders, but other businesses have. After all, Cloos has the authority to require pricey upgrades such as sprinkler systems and fire-rated doors. Fears of a big expense can create hostility even before Cloos opens her mouth. 

Hopkinsville Fire Marshal Cecelia Cloos (seated) calculates the capacity for The Princess Theater after recent renovations. On an inspection, Cloos must not only have an eagle eye for safety hazards. But she also needs the people skills to make others see the value of spending on safety.

Cloos has learned to defuse these tense moments with reason. “I try to make them see that this is for their safety and the safety of employees and everyone who enters their building,” Cloos said. “It’s important to get past the sticker shock.” And though she is not obligated to, Cloos provides a list of several safety-product vendors so that the business can more easily shop around.

Hopkinsville Fire Department Chief Fagan Pace Jr. considers Cloos’s gentler approach a major asset to prevention efforts.

“(Cloos) has helped reduce violations across the community,” Pace said.

Cloos performs between 10 and 15 inspections per week in an effort to check every public building every year.

But even that enormous responsibility accounts for only one part of her job. Cloos is also the lead investigator for suspicious structure fires and she assists state-level investigators whenever there is a fatality.

The call to a house fire can come day or night. Cloos prepares herself for the initial investigation by checking her gear. Some tools are essential: camera, evidence bags and a small hand shovel.

Other firefighters ask curiously about the undersized shovel.

“I don’t want to shovel too much and miss a clue,” Cloos answers.

Out on assignment, Cecelia Cloos can often be spotted in her Hopkinsville Fire Department squad car.

Once at the scene, Cloos gathers as many clues as she can from firefighters, residents and neighbors. She can often glean a wealth of information just by asking the right questions and carefully surveying the surrounding area. She will also interview passers-by. Then it’s time to dig. Picking through the charred ruins of a house is true detective work. Cloos hunts for forensic signs: a scorched junction box, a door hinge still intact, a burn pattern on a flat surface.  Cloos said she and her investigative team pinpoint a cause by ruling out common causes one by one.

“It’s really a process of elimination,” Cloos explains.

Cloos gets great satisfaction from solving a mysterious fire. Often times, her fire-cause determination reports are corroborated by the homeowner’s insurance company.

The challenge is to stay on the case while keeping up with a fire marshal’s many other duties, Cloos says. Since being hired in 1999, she grew accustomed to switching from detective to inspector to community liaison and back again.

It helped that she had a diverse background as a National Guard medic, EMT and firefighter. But the demands of the job pushed her much further, namely into the vast forest of fire-regulations.

Cloos’s office dedicates entire shelves to reference books on sprinkler systems, alarms, egresses and other fire-related topics. Much of the information she has had to absorb.

But Cloos knows that hitting the books, tedious as it is, can save lives. Sometimes hundreds of lives. Cloos was consulted recently architects of the soon-to-be-completed home of Christian County Middle School. The fire contingencies to consider there are so many that Cloos’s wealth of prevention knowledge is a huge advantage. She has helped identify less-obvious fire hazards and contribute toward safer designs.