Work begins to find fire's cause

SANDPOINT - The cause of a fire which demolished The Idaho Club's clubhouse on Thursday remains under investigation.

"We're still just trying to piece it all together," Northside Fire Chief Brad Mitton said on Friday. "It's really hard when it's all gone."

All that remains of the clubhouse were the two massive stone chimneys that flanked its sides and the network of concrete walls that partitioned its daylight basement. The building's footprint was littered with broken concrete flooring, mangled kitchen equipment and other wreckage.

The building's signature 20-inch Canadian spruce timbers were gone, but some of the mason work that accented the clubhouse remained.

Nobody was inside the building when the fire broke out at about 3:30 p.m. There were no injuries reported.

Mitton said club employees and others who were in the building on Thursday were interviewed, but a potential cause could not be immediately pinpointed. The building was insured and a investigator from the club's insurance provider was probing the fire's cause.

Idaho State Fire Marshal Mark Aamodt could not be immediately reached for comment late Friday.

Skip Pucci, whose construction company built the clubhouse in 2001, somberly circumnavigated the wrack and ruin on Friday.

"It's almost like a death in the family to see something like this," Pucci said as he surveyed the building's remains.

Pucci said he was last in the clubhouse on Sunday and always marveled at its rugged grandeur.

"Every time I came in I was in a state of awe," he said.