Suspicious fire levels building at the Pines Hotel
Heather Yakin
Times Herald-Record
South Fallsburg — Part of the old Pines Hotel has been torched for the second time in four years.
Someone set fire to the old day-care center at the back of the property about 11 p.m. Thursday, police say.
Firefighters from Fallsburg and five neighboring departments used a four-wheel-drive pumper to scale the narrow, overgrown, uphill road to the center, and pumper relays to get the water there.
When the blaze was out, all that remained of the old 25-foot-by-80-foot day-care building was the back wall and mounds of old files.
Fallsburg police Detective Sgt. Simmie Williams said there's no electrical service to the property, and no legitimate reason for anyone to be there — especially at night.
The property's gates are kept locked.
"I'm sure there's been squatters," he said. "The place has been ransacked and ripped off, the copper taken."
The resort was a jewel of the Catskills in its heyday, with swimming, golf and tennis in the summer, and skiing and ice skating in the winter.
The hotel was a place for visitors to frolic and for locals to gather for dinner or entertainment.
The hotel has been closed since 1998, when it was bought by The Fallsburg Estates, a company with a Manhattan law firm's address.
In 2003, a fire destroyed the old Carleton guest-room wing in the front corner of the property. That fire was ruled arson.
Decay and vandals have stripped the once-grand buildings of any dignity. Windows are smashed, graffiti tags the peeling walls and mold grows on the floors and walls and ceilings.
Looters and trespassers have left doors propped open, with handcarts and luggage racks abandoned outside and trash scattered inside.
The smoldering remains of the day- care building and the scattered files — old room accounts, time sheets and ledger entries dating from 1974 to the 1990s — reignited yesterday morning, and firefighters went back to the scene.
Someone set fire to the old day-care center at the back of the property about 11 p.m. Thursday, police say.
Firefighters from Fallsburg and five neighboring departments used a four-wheel-drive pumper to scale the narrow, overgrown, uphill road to the center, and pumper relays to get the water there.
When the blaze was out, all that remained of the old 25-foot-by-80-foot day-care building was the back wall and mounds of old files.
Fallsburg police Detective Sgt. Simmie Williams said there's no electrical service to the property, and no legitimate reason for anyone to be there — especially at night.
The property's gates are kept locked.
"I'm sure there's been squatters," he said. "The place has been ransacked and ripped off, the copper taken."
The resort was a jewel of the Catskills in its heyday, with swimming, golf and tennis in the summer, and skiing and ice skating in the winter.
The hotel was a place for visitors to frolic and for locals to gather for dinner or entertainment.
The hotel has been closed since 1998, when it was bought by The Fallsburg Estates, a company with a Manhattan law firm's address.
In 2003, a fire destroyed the old Carleton guest-room wing in the front corner of the property. That fire was ruled arson.
Decay and vandals have stripped the once-grand buildings of any dignity. Windows are smashed, graffiti tags the peeling walls and mold grows on the floors and walls and ceilings.
Looters and trespassers have left doors propped open, with handcarts and luggage racks abandoned outside and trash scattered inside.
The smoldering remains of the day- care building and the scattered files — old room accounts, time sheets and ledger entries dating from 1974 to the 1990s — reignited yesterday morning, and firefighters went back to the scene.
This article was
written by Heather Yakin
and published by Times Herald-Record
on Saturday, July 21