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INVESTIGATORS SEEK TO SOLVE MANY PUZZLES IN HOTEL FIRE

LEAD: Investigators tried today to narrow the search for answers to the many puzzling questions concerning the New Year's Eve fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel. Investigators tried today to narrow the search for answers to the many puzzling questions concerning the New Year's Eve fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel. On one question at least, Federal arson investigators said that no evidence of structural damage consistent with a bomb had been uncovered. The possibility of a planted bomb was uppermost in the minds of many hotel guests who reported hearing two or three ''explosions'' emanating from the hotel in the first minutes of the fire. The police said today that they had been warned of a bomb threat or other form of assault at the hotel on Wednesday, just 90 minutes before the fire broke out. But the comments of the Federal investigators seemed to cast doubt on that theory.

Three days after the fire, many other questions remain unanswered over the sequence of events leading up to the calamity, its cause and what transpired in the fateful minutes after it was first discovered. Arson or Negligence? At the heart of the mystery is whether the fire was set or if it was an accident, one perhaps caused by negligence. If it was set, what was the motive and what consequence was desired? If it was by negligence, what conditions contributed to it and what individuals could be held liable as a basis of claims against the hotel's designers or its owners? Political terrorism by anti-American, pro-independence groups has generally been directed against government and military installations or personnel in Puerto Rico, not average citizens or tourists. Yet Puerto Rican terrorists have been behind indiscriminate acts of terrorism on the mainland United States, most notably the January 1974 lunchtime bombing of the Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan in which five patrons were killed and 80 injured.

Political and tourism leaders in Puerto Rico have been quick to say there was no political motive behind the Dupont Plaza disaster. But Federal investigators will not discount a possible link until they have a chance to take a close look at the bitter labor dispute at the hotel. Investigators will almost certainly want to question Jorge Farinacci, a San Juan lawyer who was negotiating a labor contract with the hotel on behalf of Local 901 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 250 of the hotel's workers. Was at Meeting at Hotel Mr. Farinacci was at a meeting of about 100 union members in the hotel's beach-level ballroom at 3 o'clock Wednesday afternoon to discuss a last-minute contract offer before a midnight strike deadline, according to the hotel management.

Mr. Farinacci is currently free on $1 million bail after his indictment in 1985 on a Federal charge growing out of the 1983 robbery of $7 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Conn. Twelve other defendants in that case have been linked to Los Macheteros, described by Federal officials as a Puerto Rican terrorist outfit. Los Macheteros has taken responsibility for several terrorist attacks, including the 1979 machinegun attack on a Navy bus in Puerto Rico that killed two sailors and wounded 10 others. Mr. Farinacci has denied any connections with terrorists.