"If we didn't get there when we did, we could have had a fairly large catastrophe," said Upper Merion Fire Marshal John Waters. Luckily, he said, a fire in the bedroom ran out of oxygen before it could ignite a container of gasoline.
When authorities arrived, they found an arsenal that included 11 guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, homemade bombs, and plastic containers full of unknown chemicals.
The arson and suicide were the last acts of a man who had withdrawn from society. The Levittown native had cut ties with family members, left his church, and stopped attending meetings of a group dedicated to his unusual passion - UFOs and aliens.
Police say their chief concern is making sure that others were not involved with Kazlouski in his penchant for guns and explosives.
"Initial indications are that he didn't have any connection to a larger group," said Upper Merion Police Lt. John Hellebush.
But there are other questions. Among them is why Kazlouski had quietly stockpiled military rifles, handguns, shotguns and .50-caliber banded ammunition for heavy machine guns.
"We may never know what his plans were. What he did was bad enough," Hellebush said.
Concerned that Kazlouski might have kept weapons elsewhere, police have searched storage areas he had access to, but have turned up nothing.
Authorities said Kazlouski had no criminal record, made no known threats, had no known history of mental illness and was a stranger to local police until they were notified three weeks ago that his car was to be repossessed. Initial checks of some of the weapons found they were legally purchased, police said.
