Fire guts Barber building

A fire most likely sparked by human hand gutted the wooden interior of one of the four remaining structures of the old Diamond Match Company in the early morning hours of Aug. 2.

Marie Fickert, spokesperson for the Chico Fire Department, said natural causes, lightening, electrical malfunction or gas leak were ruled out as causes because of the weather and the fact there are no longer any utilities hooked to the 100-year-old structure, known as the apiary because bee hives once were made there.

The buildings and the 145 acres of property they sit on are owned by Jeff Greening, who has plans to develop a residential-commercial project on the land in southwest Chico known as the Barber Yard.

Fickert said Greening told her he had noticed that debris made up of wooden railings and other material scavenged from the area had been piled over time near the building’s rear staircase.

“The owner feels that could have been the place where the fire started,” she said.

Fickert said a neighbor reported seeing four to five young men in their late-20s to early teens in a car near the fire. Fickert said the young men used “some suspicious verbiage” in reference to the fire then drove off.

The Fire Department got the call at 2:04 a.m., and by the time firefighters arrived, Fickert said, the building was fully ablaze.

Incident Commander Gary Scholar said he received the call about the fire while home in his California Park residence and could see the flames from there. He said firefighters were initially told the blaze was a grassfire.

“I remember thinking, ‘That’s a heck of grass fire,’ when I was driving toward it,” Scholar said.

Scholar said the building’s metal rafters probably failed as the fire heated them. The first two collapsed, which vented the fire, allowing it to build and consume the rest of the inside. He said the building was constructed so that if there were a fire the outside brick walls would continue to stand and afterwards the inside could be rebuilt. Today’s building codes will not allow that.

Scholar said it would probably not be worth the effort and cost—$8,000 to $10,000—to bring in cranes to move debris for a thorough investigation into the cause of the blaze.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Chico Fire Department at 895-4911.