Camden fire claims life of mechanic, 65

Orlando Arroliga lived in a small trailer parked at a family truck-repair business in Camden, watching over the grounds after a house fire on the property killed three relatives in 1998. Investigators believed the fire might have been caused by an electrical problem.

On Friday, Arroliga, 65, died when his trailer caught fire on the property, Ram's Truck Repair, in the Cramer Hill section. The cause, Camden County fire officials said, was a failure in an electrical cord.

Arroliga lived with a pet rooster named Gallito and two cats, each named Micho. A mechanic, he could take anything apart, relatives said, but you didn't dare ask him to put it back together.

"Nephew, I'm done taking it apart. Now you got to put it together," Ruben Arroliga Jr. recalled his uncle telling him in the last conversation they had - about repairing a charter bus radiator.

The nephew, 30, escaped the 1998 fire and rescued his sister and her toddler daughter from the two-story house. He smiled Friday as he remembered his uncle, whom he called a character.

The county Fire Marshal's Office did not release Arroliga's name, but family members confirmed his identity.

Camden County Deputy Chief Fire Marshal Paul Sandrock said the city fire department was dispatched at 12:53 a.m. Firefighters forced their way into the locked storage yard at 27th Street and Harrison Avenue.

The county and city fire marshals' offices investigated the fire, which was extinguished in minutes, Sandrock said. Firefighters later found Arroliga's body in the trailer.

Gallito and both Michos died in the fire. The trailer did not have a smoke detector, Sandrock said.

Ruben Arroliga said his uncle had purchased a new space heater Thursday after his old one stopped working Wednesday.

Born in Nicaragua, Orlando Arroliga was the oldest of six boys and one girl. He always had an admirable work ethic, just not a home, family members said.

"He was a man that wasn't scared to try anything," Ruben Arroliga said. "He would never say die."

Ruben Arroliga's family moved to North 27th Street in the 1980s and opened the business there a year before the Nov. 22, 1998, fire, which killed his mother, Ana Garcia Arroliga, 55; her mother, Rosa Romero, 82; and a cousin, Marcelina Davila, 34.

Before he lived in the trailer, Orlando Arroliga lived with his brothers in Camden. Though they loved each other, Ruben Arroliga said, they didn't make good housemates because they bumped heads.

"He was very hardheaded," said Ruben Arroliga, who works with the business that his father started.

Once he had moved into the trailer, Orlando Arroliga insisted on staying there.

"He loved his freedom of not having anybody telling him what to do or when to get up," his nephew said.

Orlando Arroliga wasn't shy about his opinions on politics, and struck up political conversations with truckers who were customers.

"He had a loose tongue," Ruben Arroliga said.

He wanted to move back to Nicaragua in a few years, his family said, as the cold was getting to him.

On Friday, the white trailer was hauled out of the yard, and family members made funeral arrangements.

"He was one of my best friends. It's going to be hard not having him here taking things apart for me," Ruben Arroliga said.

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