Firefighters responded to the youth baseball park about 1 a.m. and found the concession stand, which also served as an equipment storage building, ablaze.
“It was gone,” said Beau Alford, volunteer firefighter, of the early morning fire. “We tried to save as much as we could ... basically, it was to make sure it didn’t spread.”
Fire Marshal Steve Casey said the fire likely started in port-a-potties located next to the building.
“We’re pretty sure the port-a-potties caught on fire and then caught the building on fire,” he said. “It went pretty fast.”
The plastic structures, he said, would have burned “quick and hot.”
“It’s very disappointing,” Rusty Williams, president of the Little River-Academy Youth Athletic Association, said of the fire. “It’s not unusual to get broken into like other concession stands. A fire is too extreme.”
Williams said association officials’ concern was to keep the children playing ball through the remainder of the half-finished season. The charred ruins prevented use of one field in the three-field complex. For the rest of the season, the games scheduled on field three will be played on the high school field.
“They stepped in and offered all of their facility to us,” Williams said of school officials. “This community is really good. Surrounding communities stepped up and offered their facilities too.”
Games started as scheduled at 6 p.m. Thursday with concessions being sold out of a second stand at the fields. Money raised through concession sales pays the umpires fees and maintains the fields.
Mayor Ronnie White said the concession stand was a former dress shop that the owner donated to the association. The local Lions Club paid for moving the structure to the fields.
“All of it is just some people helping people,” he said.
That’s how it will happen again, he said.
“We’ll do it like we did to start with,” he said. “We’ll get it back.”
Casey estimated the loss of the building and its contents at $13,000. White said it was uninsured.
“The city thought the Little League had insurance. The Little League thought the city had insurance,” he said. “It looks as if it doesn’t have any.”
Williams said they will rebuild, and will ask the players’ parents for help.
“We’ll bulldoze the thing down and get ready for another building,” he said.
Anyone with information on the fire may call Casey at 933-5589 or the Little River-Academy Police Department at 982-4248. The $2,500 reward is to those with information leading to the arrest and prosecution of those responsible. Arson is a second-degree felony, which is punishable by between two and 20 years in prison.
jsicking@temple-telegram.com
