Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Fire 4
Spraying
1889 building engulfed on night before new bar and grill to open; arson investigation started
In preparation for Tuesday’s grand opening, the new Brick Wall Bar and Grill in Palouse was full of customers for a “soft start” Monday night.
Hours later, in the dark of the early morning, a Palouse resident driving home from a night shift saw smoke coming from the roof.
It was not yet 4 a.m. Within an hour, flames roared into the sky as firefighters from four departments battled what turned into an inferno.
By daylight the 1889 building was gone.
By Tuesday afternoon, an investigation began to determine if arson was the cause.
Palouse Police Chief Jerry Neumann cited a fresh paint spill with what was described as scribbling in it found in the parking lot between the destroyed building and Heritage Park. A back door near where the smoke was first seen was unlocked, and a witness reported seeing a vehicle near the scene at 1:30 a.m.
The driver of the car might have been using the restrooms at the park, which are open 24 hours a day but Neumann said it’s a concern.
This is the eighth bar or tavern destroyed by fire in the past 10 months in a 125-mile area in Northern Idaho, Eastern Washington and Montana.
Representatives from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were due to visit the scene in Palouse Wednesday to aid in the investigation.
Fighting the fire
Palouse Fire Chief Mike Bagott believes the fire burned for some time before the 3:50 a.m. report came, after which two sirens quickly sounded over Palouse.
Volunteer fireman Mark Van Horn heard his radio go off at his Main Street residence which is three storefronts down from the smoke.
He got up and ran over to radio in his assessment.
Other Palouse firefighters soon arrived along with Police Chief Neumann, who saw no smoke coming out of the bottom front of the building.
“Initially the restaurant was clear. A lot of it was concentrated in the back,” he said Tuesday night. “There was no construction done in the back of the building. From my understanding there was no electrical back there.”
While Bagott sent a crew into adjacent buildings to evacuate the few residents nearby, another group of firefighters entered the burning location and made their way to the second floor before retreating from heavy smoke.
Meanwhile, backup was on its way, coming from the City of Pullman, City of Colfax and Pullman Fire District No. 12.
As the fire gained on the building, it eventually took it over as an estimated 30 firefighters fought it through the night.
“It was about two hours before we really felt like the fire was solidly contained to the building of origin,” said Bagott. “There was a short bit of time we thought we might lose the whole block.”
While fire departments fought the blaze, the City of Pullman and Colfax Fire departments arrived with tower ladders.
Photo sequences of a street clock across from the tavern building indicated it collapsed at about 5:20 a.m.
“From the ground it looked like the fire had spread across the rooftops,” Chief Bagott said. “This building had a somewhat peculiar construction (which kept the fire contained). Otherwise, a fire can spread from one roof joist to another roof joist to another.”
As the criminal investigation proceeds, the cause of the fire has yet to be determined.
“The presumption at this point is electrical,” Bagott said Tuesday morning. “But it’s way too early to tell.”
Since buying the building last September, Adam Barron of Palouse had restored and remodeled the former Palouse Tavern to open as the Brick Wall Bar and Grill. In addition, he had been refurbishing apartments on the second floor.
The adjacent Main Street buildings — spared in the fire — housed an art studio, car shop, apartments and Hemphill Heating and Electric which began business on the block last fall.
“It’s our volunteers that saved the day for Palouse today,” said Mayor Michael Echanove. “The important thing was that no one was hurt, and I credit the fire department and the E.M.T.s for getting people out of buildings… It was an inferno on the top of that roof.”
As news spread through the night and firefighters cut down the flames, Palouse residents appeared to offer help. A food and refreshments command station started at the Palouse Community Center about 6:30 a.m. with people later making sandwiches and others pushing carts up the street with treats on them.
Many volunteers brought down bottled water, cookies, chips, muffins and more.
“You look at the people on the street, people came out of the woodwork,” said Bagott, who ate dinner at the Brick Wall’s soft opening hours before the fire. “It was just such a positive last night, and to be in smoke and shambles 12 hours later.”
The inside
One of the servers Monday night was Daquarii Rock of Pullman, a grant writer who started her second job that morning with training from Olivia Barron, Adam’s wife.
It was Rock’s first time employed as a waitress.
After finishing her opening shift Monday night, she realized driving home that she had left her tips in a pocket of the apron she wore.
“It was completely beautiful. Clean, clean, clean,” she said of the bar and restaurant. “Nice dark wood floors, new sinks, cabinets and toilets in the bathrooms, flat-screen TVs and a pool table, neon lights. The shiny, sparkly corrugated metal on the walls reflected light. The trim was brand new on every doorway, every window, baseboard, with fresh paint.”
The walls were done in chalkboard paint, on which children had drawn Monday night.
“It had never even been erased yet,” Rock said.
The Brick Wall Bar and Grill had retained, and been named for, the original inside brick wall with writing on it from decades before when it was the Palouse Tavern, and before that the Wooden Nickel and Palouse Caboose.
The Barrons were set to sell newly exposed brick space (for writing on) as a fundraiser to restore the exterior of the building.
“Now the brick wall is on the exterior,” Rock said.
125 years
Built a year after the entire row of Palouse’s Main Street burnt down – on both sides of the street – the 1889 building’s brick construction was mandated by city ordinance after the previous fire.
“My granddad owned it,” said Dave Hill, Sr., 76, sitting on a bench in front of the Palouse library watching Tuesday morning as firefighters kept hoses aimed at the rubble. “Another part of Palouse history is gone. I feel mostly sorry for the guy that owns it now.”
Hill’s grandfather was named Clive Hill, and Dave later worked in the building as a rural mail carrier for the Post Office, which operated out of the back end of it until 1986.
“That place would’ve been jammed tonight,” said Gary Kendall, another observer on the street Tuesday morning, talking about the Brick Wall’s grand opening. “Everyone was really looking forward to it.”
Kendall heard the news of the fire from his daughter in Indiana. With Central Standard Time time being two hours ahead, she saw it on Facebook.
Overall, the waitress Rock suggested that the loss extends far beyond Palouse.
“Pullman needed a place to drive for a burger and a beer,” she said. “Palouse needs a burger joint. A place to take your kids for french fries.”
Before the old building ever held a tavern, it had housed Boone Mercantile, a general merchandise and grocery owned by J.M. Batten and a five-and-dime run by (Clive) Hill.
The upstairs had lodge meeting rooms, a doctor, dentist, law offices and later apartments.
The Palouse Tavern, the bottom floor’s previous tenant, closed last Dec. 21 after owners Bob and Tina Brookshier received a notice to vacate from Barron, who had recently purchased the building. The Brookshiers had operated the tavern for nine years.
In the end, Mayor Echanove also saluted the outlying fire departments which came to the town’s aid.
“I can’t thank them enough, for putting their lives on the line in helping folks,” Echanove said. “It makes your heart stop (to think) that the whole place was packed with people hours earlier.”
On the agenda for the Palouse City Council meeting Tuesday night was a permit request for a partial use of the south end of Beach Street - for an enclosed beer garden for the Brick Wall Bar and Grill.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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