By Gary Lee Stuber
The historic Henry Clay Hotel in downtown Clay on late Wednesday afternoon was reported on fire by 911 services. By midnight it was a total loss. As of Friday evening as this is being written, it is still on fire, a controlled fire, monitored by the Clay County fire department. Mike Scott, with the fire department, said, “I was at the fire department when the call came in. It is standard to call in a second fire department. As I got to looking at the building, I called in a third department.” Eventually there would be nine different departments called in to fight the fire. Big Otter, Lizemore, Newton, Clendenin, Servia, Frametown, Clover, and, Mike says, “A group from Gauley River also associated with the Fayette County Fire School brought down a big cooling tent.” That was badly needed. Wednesday was hot, humidity was high and the raging fire only added to the heat. Add in the heavy protective gear the firefighters wear and you can easily see how the tent helped tremendously.
The fire department had to have electric power shut down in Clay as they battled the fire across overhead power lines in front of the hotel. Ladders and water across active power lines is not a safe thing. Fortunately, there was no fire damage to either the power lines, phone lines or the new fiber optic cables. Power was restored as quickly as possible.
Despite the big cooling tent, four firefighters were treated for heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation by local EMS, and a fourth firefighter was treated onsite for heat exhaustion and transported to a Charleston area hospital for observation. He is fine.
“We couldn’t get the fire out,” Mike says, “But we got it knocked back enough we could start sending people home about midnight.” He said they kept an engine there all night. And they have been periodically spraying it down in the days since. Friday afternoon, the second floor and the remaining roof collapsed and appears to be in its final stages of burning.
The Oddfellows building next door which houses Kathy Taylor’s used furniture store and Advantage Home Care in the back was also at risk. “Not much space between the buildings,” Mike noted, “The fire jumped over to the roof of that building and began burning a strip of the roof a few feet wide by about twenty-five feet and we quickly got that stopped. That resulted in some water damage in the building.”
“About 5:30 I got a call that the building next to us was on fire,” Kathy Taylor says, “I came up and saw what was going on. I truly thought that it was going to get into our building but it did not.” She breathes a sigh of relief. “The only damage we received was a little bit of water damage when they sprayed the fire out on the roof, some water ran down inside the wall.”
Kathy is a grateful woman. “We know,” she insists, “that we were protected. We know. We believe.”
In fact, Advantage Home Care in the back of the building has file cabinet after file cabinet of paper health care records of hundreds of vulnerable patients in this county that would have been a catastrophic loss if they had caught fire. “That night,” Kathy says, “They let us in briefly and we went back there and moved all those filing cabinets that were along the wall facing the Henry Clay Hotel, and moved them about three feet away from the wall. That is about all they would allow us to do.” It was enough. Kathy believes she was blessed.
As far as getting the building down, Mike Scott said, “DEP gave us permission to take it down that night, but we didn’t have funds. Commissioner Legg is trying now to find funds to get the building torn down to prevent public danger in the near future.” Right now the brick structure still stands and is surrounded by police tape. Mike thinks the building may burn for another few days. They will continue to monitor and spray when necessary. The property is currently owned by Morgan and Joyce Gibson.
Commissioner Duane Legg is indeed trying to find funds, and Commissioner David Schoolcraft says he is too young to remember when the hotel was still open. For David it has always been closed. Both commissioners pointed me to Commissioner Joyce Johnson. “That place,” Joyce reflects, “Has so many memories for everyone. Mary Rhodes kept it clean, immaculate. The food was delicious. Everyone ordered hot dogs there for lunch. It is sad that the town has suffered this loss, but it is good that it is bringing back so many memories and has everyone talking about them.”
Like so many others she also expressed, “It is heartbreaking, but it just shows how our little town is just dwindling away and that everybody needs to work together to bring some life back into our town.”
Donna Salisbury, who operates the Family Resource Center in town and is currently running for County Commission, said she was called that night to help provide tables for firefighters. Tables were found before she could respond. “As far as I know, I was one of the last businesses in that building. Me and Terry King had a dance studio in there for kids. For a while, before moving to our next location. Terry was Wayne King’s daughter and is gone now. She died with cancer.” She laughs when she says, “Many people have fond memories of that place. They would go in to eat or play pool. Jerry’s brother drove through that building. He was mad at Peach.”
The mayor, most city officials, and even the sheriff’s department were out on Friday and might have been reluctant to speak after the media feeding frenzy of the last couple of days. Some of them have even been targets of trolls on social media as much rumor and innuendo always gets mucked about when incidents like this happen.
“As a historian,” Jerry Stover, newly reappointed to the Landmarks Commission, said, “I think we are slowly losing who we are, who we have been and who we wanted to be. With the loss of this building we have less. It was built by Clay County people. It was occupied by Clay County people. There was a time when it was the center of activity in town. It was a place to gather and talk, even kids were there to play games and have fun in a family friendly environment. The environment. It was beautiful, and the place was surrounded by mirrors. You have good and bad people everywhere. But good people kept a lid on bad people. That might be its legacy.” He echoed Joyce’s comment, “I’m afraid this is going to happen to many buildings in Clay, they will fall into obscurity. One person cannot do this. You need a lot of people to come together before we lose our town completely to apathy.”
Let’s hope for now that the Henry Clay Hotel is the last thing this town loses for a while.
