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SCHENECTADY
Fire results in former city school’s demolition
Blaze in vacant building likely was set, fire officials say
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

   Firefighters and emergency crews began demolishing a building on the National Register of Historic Places Friday after determining there was no other way to put out a stubborn fire.
   Someone set fire to the former Brandywine Avenue School before 3 a.m. Friday, Assistant Fire Chief Michael Della Rocco said.
   By the time firefighters were called to the vacant building, the roof was collapsing and it was too dangerous to go inside. The roof also endangered firefighters trying to stop the blaze from outside, as falling slate injured fi refighter Daniel Minersagan, who needed 15 stitches.
   “He was lucky. The slate fell off the roof, hit the truck, bounced off and hit him just under his eye. It could’ve hit him in the eye,” Della Rocco said.
   For 12 hours, fi refighters tried to extinguish the flames from the street, using two aerial trucks to shower thousands of gallons of water through the remains of the roof.
   But as snow began to fall Friday afternoon and smoke continued to rise from deep inside the walls, they had to admit defeat.
   “It’s gone up between the floors, between the second floor ceiling and the third floor,” Della Rocco said. “The water’s not penetrating the floor.”
   City officials held an emergency bidding session for anyone willing to demolish the building. Dan’s Hauling won with the low bid just before 2 p.m. and had the first pieces of equipment at the scene within 20 minutes. The amount of the bid was not available Friday.
   Once workers arrived, firefighters pulled their trucks back. But it took three hours for Dan’s Hauling to put together the large wrecking crane while firefighters watched nervously as the smoke grew stronger. After an hour, firefighters went back to pouring water on the building to keep the flames confined until the crane was operational.
   “When this starts to get picked apart and areas are exposed that we can’t reach any other way, we’ll extinguish those hotspots,” Della Rocco said.
   Fire investigators and an insurance claims adjuster for the owners watched the demolition closely, taking photos of the damage in hopes of determining what caused it.
   Della Rocco said it couldn’t have been an accident.
   “We didn’t have any lightning storms last night. There’s no electricity to the building and there’s no machinery to overheat,” he said. “It points to human involvement.”
   But he said he had no theories as to why someone set the school on fire. It was the third fire at the school this year; both previous fi res were deemed suspicious.
   “I can’t really speak as to why a person would do it,” Della Rocco said. “People set fires for many reasons: to get even, to get revenge, for insurance reasons. We know there have been people in and out of this building.”
   Lorraine Cuevas, who lives across the street on Brandywine Avenue, said the school’s front door has been unlocked for at least a year.
   “That door has always been open. I’ve seen several times teens going in there,” she said, adding that she could hear them breaking windows inside.
   Other firefighters speculated that homeless people might have broken in and set a fire to keep themselves warm. The previous fires were also at night during the cold season.
   “It’s hard to keep them out,” Deputy Fire Chief Mark Fragomeni said. “They seem to know every place that they could get into.”
   The building was owned by developer Richard Barden and a group calling itself Brandywine Apartments. Barden bought the school from the Schenectady City School District in 2000 for $50,000 and announced plans to convert it into 32 apartments for low- and moderate-income senior citizens.
   The project never materialized and in 2005 Brandywine Apartments stopped paying taxes on the property, according to city records. American Tax Funding now holds the 2005 and 2006 tax liens, and Brandywine has not paid any of its $9,176 sewer, water and tax bill this year.
   City officials pushed the owners to take better care of the property this year, complaining that it was too easy for vandals to break in. A board-up notice was issued, and throughout the year the city nuisance inspectors levied seven fines for violations from overgrown weeds to sidewalk maintenance. On Nov. 13, code enforcers finally got involved, issuing a $50 fine because bricks were in danger of falling off the building, Corporation Counsel L. John Van Norden said.
   “It was open and vacant. The condition of the building was causing concerns,” he said. “They were supposed to be making repairs. It’s too late now.”
   He said he expected Brandywine Apartments to pay for the emergency demolition.
   “They have insurance, so I don’t expect this will be a burden on the taxpayers beyond the cost of the overtime for the firefighters,” he said.
   The school was built in 1904. It was a teachers’ school for its first 21 years. In 1925, it became an elementary school and stayed one until 1974, when it was closed because enrollment was declining and schools were being consolidated.
   In 1975, it became the school district’s central office. Twenty years later, the district moved its offices into a wing of Mont Pleasant Middle School, and the Brandywine Avenue School sat vacant until Barden bought it in 2000.
   Barden got the school on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, while he was wrapping up his purchase of the property

PETER R. BARBER/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER A Stanford Heights fi refighter works from the top of a ladder truck while fighting a fire Friday at the Brandywine Avenue School building.