For Zelienople, it's an unsettling realization that the borough might have an arsonist living in or near the community.

The May 10 blaze that destroyed two buildings and heavily damaged a third was a shocking development for a town generally unaccustomed to troubling news of such scope. Now, the incident has taken on significant new proportions with the official ruling that the fire was intentionally set, not accidental.

A state police fire marshal has ruled that the fire started in the north side of the first floor office of the former AAA building at 200 S. Main St. The fire marshal's probe determined that the fire began in a pile of lumber that was stacked in the middle of the vacant office space.

The fire marshal said burn patterns and the lack of accidental ignition sources in the area where the fire started were key considerations leading to his ruling.

No doubt some borough residents and members of the business community are more than a little nervous about what the future might hold — whether the fire a month ago will over time turn out to be an isolated incident, or whether it represents the start of a very bad sequence of events.

Concerns like that are to be expected.

It is to be hoped that the person or persons responsible for the May 10 fire, regardless of their motivation for starting that fire, do not have their sights fixed on causing any more destruction.

Regardless, at least for the near future, the uncertainty and uneasiness will continue to haunt the borough.

No doubt the Zelienople police are hoping that their "eyes and ears" on the borough's streets will become privy to a possible suspect or suspects; indeed, anyone with suspicions about the crime should bring that information to the attention of the police.

Police are open to anonymous tips as well as information from people who are willing to make their identity known.

And, the police are willing to receive information, no matter how "remote" an informant might consider his or her information to be.

Authorities can attest to the fact that sometimes what seems to be an unlikely tidbit of evidence ends up being the crucial missing puzzle piece that ties together all of the loose ends, allowing the case to be solved.

It is to be hoped that for the community the fire was only a temporary setback.

The building in which the blaze began had been in the process of being renovated when the arsonist struck, and hopefully positive new plans for the site will materialize quickly.

The neighboring Beecher's Gelato & Gourmet Coffee at 204 S. Main St. was a popular local enterprise since opening in July 2003. Beecher's owner, Dave Brauer, plans to rebuild his business on the same site.

Both fire-ravaged buildings have been razed.

Meanwhile, the damaged structure at 208 S. Main St., which is owned by lawyer Wesley Hamilton and which housed his law practice, will remain a borough fixture as the result of repair and renovation.

While Brauer didn't express any comment about the arson ruling other than to say "we just have to move on from here," it remains the viewpoint of most in the borough that such a crime is not supposed to happen in a community of Zelienople's character. Every community has some degree of crime, but for places of Zelienople's size and general attitude, arson generally is not a problem.

If time proves that the May 10 fire was in fact an isolated incident, it will remove the uneasiness that the community is justified in feeling today. But such uneasiness doesn't go away in a few days or weeks — or even in a couple of months.

The faster an arrest or arrests are made in the May 10 fire, the quicker Zelienople can go back to feeling its former sense of safety and security — go back to just being Zelienople.