Patagonia residents were alarmed by the smoke in town on the night of June 14. A fire had began about 9 pm on June 14th at High Spirit Flute Factory, located off Harshaw Ave. A man who lives on the property had reported the fire as it quickly spread to engulf the whole storage building. As firefighters from Patagonia arrived, neighbor Carolos Mendoza had been spraying down the adjacent building with a garden hose, and Odell Borg, the owner of High Spirits, credits him with saving that building.
The building which burned was primarily a storage building, for shipping & packing materials, some office-related things, smaller equipment, etc., and had one smaller space for staining flutes, and there were not many flutes kept in the building. Odell said he is not sure of the exact contents of the building, but it was full.Â
A grubby cleanup job awaits, and nothing but a little corrugated tin might be salvagable.
Because of the multiplicity of substances and materials in the building, the smoke was considered pretty toxic by the firefighters, and the cleanup will also be approached carefully with this in mind. The little tree by the access ramp probably will be OK, and another, to the side, was scorched on one side, but because it received a big slug of water from the firefighting it might recover.
One space had gotten used for staining but the primary finishing work, with oils, happens in another building. Because of a past dumpster fire from oily rags, Odell said, they are always careful to put used rags directly into water, whether stain or oil. He didn’t think the fire was started from spontaneous combustion, and considered an electrical origin.
Asked about the possibility of arson, Odell mentioned that the County Sherriff’s office was opening an investigation, and that the insurance examiners, who’d be coming within a few days, do their own investigations of the physical evidence, so the High Spirits people would need to leave everything in place until they arrived.
