By Jim Newell

Review Editor

A fire at an abandoned home in the 3000 block of S. Baldwin Road early Sunday morning has been ruled a case of arson by an Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Fire Investigator.

Orion Township firefighters and deputies from the sheriff’s office Orion Township Substation responded to the house at 3:36 a.m. Nov. 30, according to an incident report from the sheriff’s office.

A passerby called authorities after noticing an “orange glow” coming from inside the home.

The house, just north of Maybee Road on Baldwin Road, had been set for demolition and was unoccupied at the time of the fire. There were no injuries reported, the sheriff’s office said.

When firefighters arrived on the scene, command officers determined that it was an exterior-only attack “due to the large volume of fire on arrival,” according to an incident update on the fire department’s Facebook page.

The home was described as a small, two-story house, and “was in a grouping of homes slated for demolition in connection with construction on Baldwin Road,” the fire department reported.

Firefighters remained on scene for several hours extinguishing the blaze.

“This fire was not a training burn as some social media pages had suggested,” the fire department reported.

Several people had speculated online that the fire department was conducting a training exercise in the middle of the night.

When deputies arrived, the house was vacant, but they discovered several footprints in the fresh snow and it appeared that the back door had been kicked open, the sheriff’s office reported.

Once the fire had been extinguished, the fire department requested the assistance of the OCSO Fire Investigations Unit.

An OCSO Fire Investigator responded for a cause and origin investigation and determined the fire to be arson. The sheriff’s office is still investigating.

If anyone has information about the fire, contact the Orion Township Substation at 248-393-0090.