Roof on old Cherry building catches fire
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on June 15, 2016 1:46 PM
The roof of the Royster Building at Old Cherry Hospital caught fire Tuesday evening while a contractor was working on the roof with a torch.
Everyone inside the building was evacuated and no one was injured.
"They are working to replace the roof," said the hospital's Chief Executive Officer Luckey Welsh.
Assistant Goldsboro Fire Chief Frank Sasser said work being done with the torch caused the tar on the roof to catch fire. Smoke filled three out of four of the building's floors.
"They were working close to a ventilator shaft, so when it caught it pulled the smoke into the fourth floor," Sasser said.
Smoke was sucked down onto the fourth, third and second floor of the hospital before firemen were able to enter the building and ventilate the floors with fans.
"Obviously there was a lot more smoke on the top floor than the third and second floors," Sasser said. "What we did was put a fan at the base of the stairway and opened up some areas of the building to blow the smoke out of the building."
The fire on the roof, which started just before 6 p.m., was put out with a fire extinguisher.
Sasser said the roof of the building is made of layers of tar, concrete and rocks.
Welsh and Sasser both confirmed that the Royster building, which is located on Stevens Mill Road on the main thoroughfare through Cherry Hospital just past the road's intersection with Old Smithfield Road, is an administrative building and no patients were inside the building at the time of the fire.
Welsh said the area of the roof that caught fire was a square roughly two feet long by two feet wide.
Goldsboro Fire Department Engines 1, 2, 3 and 4, Ladder 1 and Car 2 responded to the fire, as well as members of the Rosewood Fire Department.
The old Cherry Hospital was built in the 1950s, and occupies 380,000-square-feet stretched across four buildings. There are less than 200 beds in the facility.
A new Cherry Hospital is waiting to be occupied on West Ash Street, just up the road from the old hospital where the fire happened Tuesday evening. The opening date for the new hospital has been pushed back many times.
Construction on the $93 million, three-story, 410,000-square-foot psychiatric facility began in 2010 and was supposed to be completed in 2012.
The more than 300 bed facility is now four years past its original completion date.
Cherry Hospital currently has less than 1,000 employees. When the new Cherry Hospital opens and the old hospital closes, there will be about 1,400 employees.
There will be a 90-day transition period before the new hospital opens for employees to be trained in the new facility. Patients will be moved to the new facility after the 90-day transition period is completed.
There is still no firm date for when the new hospital will open its doors.