Fire consumes old Port Arthur school, cause undetermined

When firefighters arrived about 2 a.m. Wednesday, flames were shooting out of the old school building nestled in the shadow of the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive bridge in Port Arthur.

“When they first arrived and saw the size of the fire they had, they decided to (fight the) fire defensively,” said Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Washburn.

He said the cause of the blaze at the former George Washington Carver school remains “undetermined.”

Battalion Chief Pat Murphy said firefighters dragged hoses the 300 feet or so from Foley Avenue, under the bridge and to the building, which was behind a chain-link fence with trees, bushes and vines grown up around it.

Since the building was structurally unstable before the fire, firefighters did not enter, Murphy said. Part of the building collapsed before the fire, but more fell in the blaze.
By Blair Dedrick Ortmann, The Beaumont Enterprise