The small town of Susanville has a lot of history. But now, a piece of it is gone.
At 3:19 a.m. Sunday, Cal Fire responded to the old Sierra Pacific Industries mill along Riverside Drive. Despite efforts from nine different agencies, the mill burned down.
“It's been my worst nightmare, being it’s such a large, wood-frame structure,” said Tim Nobles, the owner of the building.
Nobles also owns Nobles Construction Components (NCC), a local business that makes prefabricated components, and operated in the mill.
Shortly after 3 a.m., he got the call no business owner wants to get.
“One of my ex-employees, a friend of mine. His name was Brian. He called and said, Hey, your mill's on fire,” Nobles said. “I don't think I ever got dressed so fast in my life. And I came down here, and it was half engulfed in flames by then. Within 30 minutes, it was fully engulfed.”
Leon Myers is the acting assistant chief of the Susanville Fire Department and was one of the first firefighters on scene Sunday morning. As a longtime Susanville resident, he said the loss will be felt for a long time.
"It's definitely going to change the view, especially going down Riverside Drive,” Myers said. “It's something I've grown up seeing. I've had family members who worked at that mill. It's been here my whole life, and it'll be noticed that it’s gone.”
Even without a proper building to run out of, NCC CEO Quincy McCourt said the show must go on.
“We had loaded trailers, and we've got customers that need their product,” he said. “So we are working on a plan to put everything back together tomorrow and get the product out ASAP.”
Nobles said the goal is to get his 32 employees back to work by sometime next week. The building's future, however, isn't looking good.
“It's hard to insure these old structures, so that's not really insured,” he said. “I'm going to have to rebuild it somehow with my own funds."
The Fruit Growers Supply Company built the mill in 1921 and later sold it to another company that would become Sierra Pacific Industries. SPI closed the mill in 2004, and NCC would open hat the location in 2014.
