After a two-hour City Council hearing Tuesday on underground fires, stakeholders were in roughly the same place they’ve been for months: unsure what has prompted a recent string of explosions in downtown Baltimore.

Public Safety Committee members wondered aloud how to stop cables within the aging conduit network dozens of feet beneath their feet from bursting into flames.

Zac Blanchard inquired about targeted, proactive inspections.

Phylicia Porter pondered AI cameras that could monitor for fires.

Mark Conway, the committee chair, asked the relevant parties gathered at City Hall — not far from the most recent blaze — to, please, not play the blame game.

“I just encourage everybody to take a second,” he said, “really try to problem solve, put on our thinking caps and put the fingers away.”

The hearing yielded no clear solutions or big next steps. But a bit of clarity could be on the way. Council members pinned some hope on RTI Consulting, an investigator recently hired by the city, to provide some much-needed answers when it issues a report regarding the two most recent fires.

That analysis, expected this fall, will be completed roughly one year after a September fire destroyed chunks of Charles Street and a few months after a separate blaze on June 28 damaged Baltimore Street near City Hall.

Fires within Baltimore’s buried conduit — an aging series of ducts, some predating the invention of PVC pipe — have happened for over a century, and elsewhere, too.

But there has been an especially damaging spate of fires in downtown Baltimore. Blanchard, who represents the area and is vice chair of the safety committee, pointed out that Viva Books had to replace essentially all of its inventory last year, and the Irish bar Mick O’Shea’s lost over $100,000 in revenue.

“It’s just such a real kick to the stomach,” he said.

Fighting underground fires is daunting. Firefighters did not apply water to the June 28 blaze to avoid risk of electrocution; it eventually self-extinguished.

“This particular type of fire is very challenging for us,” said Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace.

They are also notably difficult to investigate.

BGE previously stated in a report that the fire in September “destroyed everything in and around the conduit,” making it difficult to analyze what went wrong.

The city has always owned the conduit — which was built over a century ago and is still mostly made of outdated materials such as terracotta — and leases it to various tenants. Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, the region’s utility, occupies most of it.

BGE has said last September’s fire on Charles Street was likely prompted by the city’s trenching work. The city has disputed that. Others have suggested that heat and condensation from underground steam lines, which run near the conduit, could have contributed to blazes.

Before Tuesday’s hearing, BGE’s director of regional electric operations, Tom Rafferty, told reporters that two days after the most recent fire, trenches in the area remained roughly 165 degrees. That high temperature could point to steam as a factor, he said.

But representatives from Vicinity Energy, the steam line owner, said during Tuesday’s hearing that they have found nothing to indicate their system was involved. Their steam line is located several feet away from the site of the Charles Street fire and their property was “unharmed” after the most recent blaze, said Samay Kindra, Vicinity’s government affairs manager.

“The two most recent underground fires were not caused by our system,” said Tricia Keegan, Vicinity’s senior vice president of operations, based out of Boston.

Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer pushed back, saying that was a “pretty bold” assertion to make while the investigation is ongoing.

The causes of the subterranean blazes have been the source of much speculation but no consensus.

The city’s Department of Transportation is in charge of maintaining the conduit, but various tenants — including BGE, which is largely responsible for the bulk of the conduit’s capital improvements, following a 2023 deal with the city — play a role, too. Then there is other infrastructure underground, including steam and water lines.

“It’s felt like it’s a little bit unclear who’s responsible for what. Who’s on first? Who’s on second?” City Council President Zeke Cohen said Tuesday, adding that there were a “few dropped balls” in regard to communications after the fires.

Khalil Zaied, Deputy Mayor of Operations within Mayor Brandon Scott’s office, stressed that the conduit is not only the city’s system, but its “asset.”

“We own it, and we’re responsible for it. We are going to make sure it is a healthy, valid, good system,” he said.

Portions of the conduit have been upgraded, including with phenolic duct, a newer technology that can withstand high temperatures, but the vast majority remains built of outdated materials.

Entirely replacing the system would be incredibly expensive, and the city already has competing priorities, Zaied noted.

Still, the hearing underscored just how crucial it is to diagnose the perplexing conduit problem.

Tuesday’s only public comment came from a resident concerned that the next time a fire breaks out, the relevant parties could be dealing not only with power outages and destruction — but a fatality.