jdadamo:
Generally speaking, an overloaded circuit would tend to have excessive voltage drop which is enough to cause a motor to fail. Most motors will not start or draw excessive current if the voltage is much below 85% of nameplate (>15% voltage drop).
And since a motor starting can create a voltage drop, the freezer's motor in this case would be making a bad situation worse.
This type of tragedy is one I've read of too many times. Family smells smoke, fire dept. comes, finds nothing, leaves, hours later a blaze starts. Many times cause was later found to be electrical.
I have a friend who is a firefighter, I will ask him if the fire dept's. training covers detection/recognition of the unique nature of fire started by overloaded electrical circuits/equipment.
My hunch here is that without tearing open walls, etc. the fire dept. really has no way of verifying possible ignition sources. IF the dept. happens to have an IR camera device (I saw one in use at a smoke call in a $75 mil. mansion I was working in) they might have found the potential hazard. Otherwise it would be a matter of the firefighters seeing visible signs of smoke/fire or being in the right place at the right time as it were.
In the mansion call, it was determined that an air handler motor burned out. Even though the caause was found, the fire chief reccomended that the staff maintain "observational" status for at least the next six hours and immediately call in anything out of the ordinary.
