Smoke from the fire burning at the historic Central Building school in Baker City on the morning of May 22, 2024.

BAKER CITY — A deputy state fire marshal overseeing the investigation into the May 22 fire that gutted the historic Central Building, a former school in Baker City, said Monday, May 27, that he doesn’t believe the 108-year-old structure can be saved.

“With the damage, my opinion is that it’s likely to be condemned and taken down,” said Casey Kump, deputy state fire marshal for Baker, Union and Wallowa counties.

Kump said the building is at risk of collapsing.

He said the fire damaged the steel girders between the building’s external walls of tuffstone, as well as trusses.

The roof collapsed during the blaze, which was reported about 6:30 a.m. on May 22.

“At this time the concern is with public safety and maintaining collapse zones while the school district and BTI (Baker Technical Institute) work with insurance on a demolition plan,” Kump said.

Workers put up temporary cyclone fencing around the property.

The 57,000-square-foot, three-story building, which has not been used since the Baker School District closed it in 2009, occupies the block between Washington and Court avenues, and Fifth and Sixth streets.

The Central Building, which housed Baker High School from 1917-52 and later was part of the Baker Middle School campus, is southwest of the Helen M. Stack building that serves all BMS students now.

The investigation

Kump said the extensive damage to the building’s interior has so far prevented investigators from entering.

“The majority of our investigation at this time involves photos gathered from early stages of fire development and first responder interviews,” he said. “Law enforcement is involved at a high level with interviews and information gathering.”

Kump said he could not estimate when the investigation would be finished, or when investigators will be able to enter the structure.

Ivy Nelson, who lives just across Sixth Street from the tennis courts at the southwest corner of the Central Building, said on May 22 that she has in the past seen people, who appeared to be homeless, enter a small structure attached to the building near the tennis courts.

Baker City Police Chief Ty Duby said police have also received reports of people trespassing in that area in the past.

Lindsey McDowell, public information and communications coordinator for the school district, said district officials have “received reports regarding potential trespassers in the past that resulted in sweeps of the building, changing/re-keying locks, chaining exterior doors, and boarding up windows to help keep the building secure.”

McDowell said she wasn’t aware that any of those reports mentioned the small structure near the tennis courts.

Kump said he couldn’t comment on whether investigators believe anyone was inside the building on May 22.

A former student reminisces

Gary Dielman, a longtime Baker County historian and 1957 Baker High School graduate, attended classes for four years — sixth through ninth grades — when the middle school campus included both the Helen M. Stack and Central buildings.

(Today, BMS houses seventh and eighth graders.)

“I have lots of memories of the Central Building,” Dielman wrote in an email to the Herald on May 27. “Shop class was in the northeast corner, which was half below ground level.

“My favorite memory is about band class, which was held in the building’s wonderful theater. When one entered the building at the southeast corner, one climbed a story-and-half stairway to the second floor to access the theater. In my opinion it’s the best theater Baker City every had. Classic sloping audience area down to the orchestra pit just below the stage, where I sat daily with fellow students for band class. And choir students also had class there.”

Dielman recalled that at the southeast corner, partially below ground, there was a basketball court. There was a cafeteria at the west end of the Central Building.

Building’s history, and recent renovations

After the new high school opened in 1952, the school district used the Central Building as part of the BMS campus for decades.

Baker Technical Institute received a $500,000 grant in 2020 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to replace the building’s leaking roof, a project that, after delays due to the pandemic, started last fall and was recently finished with caulking, said Doug Dalton, BTI president.

BTI also planned to remove asbestos flooring and lead-based paint this fall, Dalton said, but that project was still in the planning stages.

Dalton said BTI’s goal was to make the building usable for some other purpose.

He said workers had removed many of the objects from the school, including desks.

“It’s basically an empty building,” he said.

In 2006 the school district considered remodeling the Central Building. In 2009, when the school board decided to close the building and declare it surplus property, the structure housed the BMS wood shop as well as music, cooking and sewing programs and art classes.