Historic Building Burned in Concrete

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

We awoke early this morning. Ron, my fiance, was dreaming and moving around in his sleep. I had been dreaming also. I have been experiencing some really weird dreams since being on the Chantix non-smoking medicine. I was talking in my sleep and that's what woke me so early. It was about five o'clock. Ron was awake and talking to me.

“You know that big castle building? Well it burned down to the cement last night.”

I thought he was telling me about his dream. We have been watching a DVD series called “Monarch of the Glen”. It is a BBC series filmed in Scotland. It centers around a family living in a huge castle. So, I assumed he was referring to that castle.

I was wrong. He was on his KOMO news site last night on his computer and saw that the historic school building downtown Concrete here was destroyed by a huge raging fire! It was being remodeled by a developer and had looked like an uncompleted castle.

Witnesses said flames from the fire could be seen from a half a mile away. The cause of the fire has not been determined yet, but it's suspicious because there was no electricity to the empty building and people have been breaking in. It appears that there were no injuries or fatalities.

The fire raged through the building just off Concrete's Main Street which is across the Skagit River from where we live. We didn't pay any attention to the siren going off in town. We had heard it so many times as they have the drill every week, plus it had the tendency to go off frequently because of forest fires here during dry hot spells.

Ron had been gone on a bike ride earlier that day and said that he recalled seeing what appeared to be smoke toward the north of us later in the day upon returning home.

The investor had purchased the old school more than two decades ago, he had added a huge castle like structure to the top of the building. It was, in my opinion, ugly and outrageous and gave the building the look of an Insane Asylum! Or, at the most, that someone insane had come up with the idea to have it resemble a castle.

We thought that it was such an eyesore for a town already known for it's huge ugly concrete silo landmarks. One with WELCOME TO CONCRETE sprawled across it some fifty feet up off the ground! The silos are reminders of the once thriving concrete making that occurred here in the past. The concrete was made from the rich lime deposits in the river and shipped elsewhere by trains from the silo's .

Getting back to the burned building, as it turned out the developer hadn't done anything with the building over the last two decades; leaving it a prime target for vandals.

Witnesses said it appeared the fire started in one of the upper corners of the building. It had gutted the entire interior of the building, leaving only the cement walls standing.

Fire crews from as far away as Mt. Vernon were called in to fight the fire. Crews continued to pump water into the blaze for hours into the night.

Ron and I drove down to take a look. It was all roped off with yellow tape around the property. The trees behind what was left of the building were all blackened. We did not see any hot spots still burning. We saw a Sheriff questioning some young boys nearby. There was a young woman scribbling on a pad with a pen as she talked to an elderly couple along side of their vehicle parked across the street.

When we drove away I couldn't help but say to Ron:

“I hope that whoever set that ugly building on fire doesn't get arrested for it.”

Ron had to chuckle at that. He said:

“Whoever set the fire should get a Community Service Award.”

Oh, don't get me wrong...not that we don't really feel someone should be arrested for arson. We just can't help but think that they should put up fliers all over town stating:

“Was It Arson Or Outstanding Community Service?”




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