AUGUST 30, 2015
Site of Old Fort Gay High School Had No Utilities to Building In Three Years, Officials Looking For Possible Suspect…
Fire Marshal Investigating Blaze At Old Fort Gay High
The West Virginia state fire marshal’s office is investigating a fire that partially destroyed an old school building in Wayne County.
At around 6:30 P.M Saturday evening, Wayne 911 received a call of heavy smoke and some flames being seen coming from the building that was the previous Fort Gay Middle School.
The Fort Gay Fire Department responded onto the scene, being only 2 blocks from the site.
Fort Gay Fire Chief Joseph Bowen said the fire started on the first floor of the old Fort Gay High School and quickly spread to the second floor of the building.
After a few minutes on the scene, Fort Gay Gay fire officials made a mutual assistance call to fire departments from Louisa, Wayne, Pritchard and Big Sandy F.D., who all responded to the call and helped bring the fire under control.
At one point, a call was even made for assistance from the Cannonsburg Fire Department in Boyd County when for a brief period it appeared the building would become fully engulfed into a massive inferno, but that call was soon canceled after the several fire agencies contained the flames to the middle section of the building
It’s not clear at this time how extensive the damage is.
A cause of the fire has not been determined, but the state fire marshal has been called in to investigate, as the school had no utilities running to the site since its closure in June 2013. In its place was the the new $10 million Fort Gay Elementary and Middle School, which was built behind the old building, on the site of the old Fort Gay High School football field.
The building was the Old Fort Gay High School when it opened in 1930, before being turned into the Fort Gay Middle School in 1989 after the merger of Fort Gay High School and Crum High School into present day Tolsia High School.
By late Saturday night, word had spread that arson was the likely cause of the fire; and that local law enforcement had a ‘person of interest’ that they were looking for to get for questioning.
