Portsmouth sifts through debris from church fire

PORTSMOUTH

Yellow bulldozers crawled over piles of rubble at the corner of High and Green streets Friday, scooping up chunks of red bricks and strands of twisted metal from the remains of three Olde Towne buildings destroyed by fire the day before.

A rack of clothes inside a closet and merchandise with price tags still attached were visible through the torn-away front of Skipjack Nautical Wares & Marine Gallery, next door to Zion Baptist Church and Visions Community Services Center.

Starting Thursday night, demolition crews began breaking down the buildings, clearing the way for fire investigators from the Tidewater Regional Arson Panel and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The arson panel's involvement is routine in fires this size, said Portsmouth fire department spokesman Jeff Terwilliger, and does not indicate a suspicious fire. By midafternoon Friday, investigators had determined that the fire started in the church sanctuary near the tower on Queen Street.

Terwilliger said the tower is stable and will remain standing for now. It may be days before investigators discover a cause, he said. "Unless they just get in there and something clicks right away, it may be awhile."

The fire broke out about 4:40 a.m. Thursday and eventually claimed the 142-year-old Zion Baptist Church, the Skipjack antique store and gallery, whose owners lived in a second-floor apartment, and a community services center owned and operated by the church.

Many older buildings are more vulnerable to fire than modern structures, said

Aubrey Brock, an architect and a former member of Portsmouth's Commission of Architectural Review. That's partly because the interiors of many buildings dating to Zion Baptist Church's time are "constructed with a lot of wood," he said.

Outdated electrical systems, especially those in walls, ceilings, and floors, also can make such buildings prone to flames, he said. Those systems "by no means would be permitted today," he said.

Deon Foster started her Friday morning grinding coffee at The Kitchen Koop shop on High Street, with the destruction framed in her front window. She said she didn't know what the fire would do to business.

"It's a domino effect," Foster said. "Something of this magnitude affects all of us. But you do what you have to do - open your doors and be available. The show must go on."

Most businesses in the 600 block of High Street were closed Friday morning, although the power was on and they were not prevented from operating by the fire department.

The block remained closed to traffic, but the sidewalks were open.

The fire left a chink in the armor of a block that had come back to life with specialty stores, antique shops and restaurants carved out of mostly turn-of-the-20th-century buildings.

"The personal tragedy is horrible," City Councilman Doug Smith said. "And the urban design tragedy is real, too."

Smith, a former deputy city manager, said the "challenge with High Street has always been that it is so linear and there's no depth really behind High Street."

"You get a break in it and it's almost like a broken smile," he said.

Rebuilding has its own challenge - mixing new construction with historic buildings that give downtown much of its appeal.

Portsmouth leaders said they are comfortable that the city's review processes will ensure a good blend of the old and new. City Councilman Ray A. Smith Sr. said a downtown design committee will approve plans for any new buildings proposed for the vacant sites.

"It's a compatibility issue," Fred Brusso, the city's special projects administrator, said. "That's what they're looking at."

Staff writer Cheryl Ross contributed to this report.

Jim Washington, (757) 446-2536, jim.washington@pilotonline.com