Someone playing with matches or smoking crack cocaine could have caused the Sunday afternoon, Oct. 14 fire that gutted part of the Little River County Training School, the former Brown Junior High School, according to lawmen probing the incident.
Ashdown Police Chief Ben McCraw said at press time that the fire is officially being investigated as arson.
“At this time, until it’s ruled otherwise, that would be the proper way to say it,” McCraw said. “It is being investigated as an arson until something changes or it’s ruled differently. We do feel like it probably was arson.”
McCraw said the APD and the Ashdown Fire Department “suspected arson” in the fire and immediately contacted Arkansas State Police Investigator Hays McWhirter, an arson investigator.
“We want to give it the best shot we’ve got,” McCraw said.
McWhirter told the Little River News on Monday, Oct. 15, that, “It could have been a crack head down there, smoking crack” that caused the fire.
McWhirter said, “there always has been” crack cocaine use in the general area where the school is located.
McWhirter said the part of the building destroyed by fire contained leftover donations for Hurricane Katrina victims, which he said, “had been there for several years.”
“I wouldn’t think that somebody would deliberately go in there and set it in the middle of the day,” McWhirter said. “There was no electricity in the building and you could have a crack head in there, smoking crack and something got on fire.”
McWhirter said Sunday afternoon’s light wind likely entered the burning area through dissolved skylights in the roof and fanned the fire.
“After those skylights melted, that would be just like putting fuel to the fire with the wind blowing,” McWhirter said.
McWhirter said the old school building structure contains a large amount of wood and has a tarred roof. McWhirter said the roof “is sagging all throughout the building.”
“It’s an unsafe building to be in right now,” McWhirter said.
McWhirter said the initial on-scene investigation of the fire did not reveal an accelerant trail, usually an indicator that a fire was intentionally set.
“They didn’t find anything like that,” McWhirter said.
McCraw said there was “no purpose” for the fire.
“It wasn’t like somebody broke in to steal something and then set it on fire, because there’s nothing in there,” McCraw said.
McCraw said it would have been easy for anyone to enter the former school building.
“All the doors are open on it and the windows are all broken out,” McCraw said. “It could have been kids playing with matches. It could have been vandalism. We don’t know what it was yet.”
Ashdown firemen rushed to the scene in mid-afternoon after being notified by the Little River County Sheriff’s Office Central Dispatch Office that the school building was “totally engulfed” in fire.
A tall plume of grayish black smoke, visible for several miles, towered from the fire.
Ashdown Fire Chief Toy Bishop, firemen Michael Pennington, Chas Davis and others shot torrents of water into the red-hot fire for nearly an hour before reducing the blazing structure to a wet, smoldering ruin.
At one point, the heat overcame Davis, who was wearing bulky firefighting “turn-out gear.” Davis walked a few yards away from the fire, shed part of his gear then dropped to his hands and knees, asking for water. A fellow fireman quickly gave Davis a dripping bottle of cold water.
An electrical worker manning a “cherry picker” lift unit hosed down the building’s roof-- close to where part of the roof had just caved in from the fire.
Little River County JP Charlie Henderson assisted firemen at one point in pulling a swollen fire hose closer to where the bright orange flames were incinerating the aging building.
On-lookers watched from along Wood Street as the firemen flooded the fire with their hoses. Some laughter was heard among young adults watching the commotion.
Meanwhile, Shirley Coleman-Johnson, an LRCTS Project Director whose work mainly involves HIV and AIDS, told the Little River News that the fire was “something that was intentional.”
“That very well may be so,” Coleman-Johnson said, regarding the possibility that the fire was drug-related. “It could have been a crack head in there smoking. A crack addict doesn’t care one way or the other.”
Coleman-Johnson estimated that the fire destroyed some $30,000 worth of contents inside the building. She said the fire’s location contained clothing and other items originally donated for Hurricane Katrina victims, but which have since been routinely given to “anybody that was burned out or anything, anybody that needs something.”
“We had stored a lot of stuff in that room. That was the distribution center,” Coleman-Johnson said.
Now, she said, “All of it’s gone.”
Coleman-Johnson angrily watched on Sunday afternoon as the hot fire engulfed the school building, causing its metal structure to buckle and its windows to burst.
“We can’t have anything! I hope they’re happy now!” she said bitterly.
Coleman-Johnson told the Little River News a day after the fire that she was referring to those who have long believed that the LRCTS buildings should be razed.
To read more see this week's edition of the Little River News!