Mystery Unfolds as Teen Arsonists Take Down 170-Year-Old Historic Mill in Upstate New York
The Devastating Fire At New York’s Historic Victory Mills
Victory Mills Fire Department/FacebookFirefighters eventually got the blaze under control, but the mill had been destroyed beyond repair by then.
Officials were first alerted to a blaze at the historic Victory Mills on the afternoon of May 31 at around 2:30 p.m. When officials arrived on the scene, the mill was entirely engulfed in flames.
It took an hour for first responders to get the fire under control, while 108 firefighters remained on the scene for a total of seven hours. They were forced to take a defensive approach of containing the fire due to the sheer size of the blaze.
Victory Mills Fire Department/FacebookLocal officials called the fire “devastating.”
“We’ve already made the call that nobody is going into the structure unless there is immediate life at risk,” said Victory Mills Fire Department Chief Ryan Campbell while at the scene. “We had no reports of immediate life when I got on scene. I was told that there was nobody in the structure at that point. It was fully involved, so we took a complete defensive approach to it.”
“There’s been embers going as far as the eye can see. The flames have been coming,” one witness said. “I could feel the heat just standing by that fence. You could see things collapse, and you could hear things collapse as it’s been going.”
As the Times Union reported, containing the blaze was no easy task. Firefighters were seen driving back and forth to the scene in tanker trucks to resupply with water. They also filled large rubber pools as an additional water source, as well as pumping water from the nearby Fish Creek.
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