MIDDLETOWN, Ohio– Middletown Police now know who is responsible for causing a massive fire that burned for more than a day in Middletown. 

35-year-old Joshua Lamb admitted to starting a fire inside the abandoned Corson Warehouse on Verity Parkway. Lamb says he started a fire to stay warm, as he and four others were taking shelter inside the warehouse early on New Year’s Day. In Lamb’s confession to police, he says he left to retrieve more firewood, but upon his return, the fire spread to his bedding and quickly spread throughout the building.

A preliminary search of the property gave no indication anyone was still inside. Still, authorities are looking for two people who were known to live there: J.D. Robinson and Tiffany Orayno.

“So what we’re asking is that id J.D. or Tiffany see this press conference to please come forward and let us know that they’re safe and they’re okay. What that does, in turn, we’re grateful that they’re safe, they’re okay, they’re not hurt. But it also keeps our firefighter, police officers, and public works personnel safe because, with that building, it is a dangerous job to try to find if anybody is in there,” says Paul Lolli, Middletown Chief of Fire. 

Lolli is confident the two unaccounted for people are not in the rubble from the fire, but will potentially use cadaver dogs to search further once the fire is entirely out. 

Lamb, the man responsible for the fire, is being held at the Middletown jail on twenty thousand dollars bond.

**Update: The two unaccounted for people mentioned in the story have been located.