Roughly around 4:30 pm, Stacy Blackburn was at Cullen Grimes taking images when he noticed smoke coming from the backside of the building. Stacy called 911, and the Mineral Wells Fire Department located the fire. It was a very minor fire, as one firefighter said it was just smoldering when they arrived.
It is unclear the cause of the fire at this time. The owner of the old Cullen Grimes Elementary, David Hawes, was at the scene as well and he shared that he currently has hired people to clean out the inside of the building.
David is planning on completely renovating the old structure to put it back to use (we will be publishing an article on that soon). To clarify, all damages to the building were already there as they have been pulling out the insides to renovate.
The Firefighters also noticed a smell of natural gas. They brought out a device to detect where the gas smell was coming from. It appeared to be leaking natural gas from a boarded-up window. Luckily this fire did not get out of control. If we learn more information, we will update this article.
The first video below was from today, where David and Deputy Chief Dusty Benthall went to look around the inside of the structure after the fire was put out. The second video is from 2016, where three previous students told stories about Cullen Grimes Elementary. David Hawes is in the 2016 video. Unfortunately, it was published with a typo on his name. This was one of the first Jonny Goodday videos.
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