The Hampton House, a members-only recreational facility sitting among the foothills of Monte Sano in Hampton Cove, was decimated by fire over the weekend.
The blaze started around 11 p.m. Friday night and burned and smoldered until about 2 a.m. Saturday. The assistant fire marshal, Trent Bennett, and the director of the facility, Laura Taube, paint a picture of what happened before the building burned - and what happens next.
"We're still trying to figure out what started this," Bennett said. "We started trying to pinpoint certain places. So we're still investigating at this point."
"Nobody wants to speculate right now, added Taube. "One of my lifeguards that lives right down the road said the Hampton House is on fire and sent me a picture. And, you know it was surreal. I was shaking."
An older building that was undergoing renovations, Taube said the clubhouse was missing crucial hardware. "The building didn't have sprinklers. We were getting ready to put it on, the fire alarm for the elevator, but ... nothing had been done yet on that. So there were no sprinklers in the building.
Bennett noted the building was 30 years or more old. "The fire codes around the time that it was built, it probably wasn't a requirement at that time. So with the renovation that was going on, there were actually getting a fire alarm system put in and it was just going to be added in."
What makes the destruction all the more devastating is that the Hampton House was almost through with its renovations.
"The clubhouse itself has been under renovation for a year," said Taube. "We were scheduled to open up in August, so we were only two months away."
Moving forward, there is hope to rebuild.
"It's going to have to be torn down and we're going to have to figure out, a start from scratch kind of thing," said Taube. "A lot of memories are in this, for a lot of folks around here. People live here forever.