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**Photos courtesy of Walt Wirth**Nishi Gupta Reporting
Folks in Ogden watched as a landmark burned for hours last night. When crews responded to the old Shupe-Williams building, they knew it was a loss. And they also knew no one was inside, so their game plan switched from protecting the building to saving what was around it.
Crews accomplished their goal; there was little damage to anything else, but they had to let the building burn.
"It's almost sad because the building's been there for a long time, now there's nothing."
The 60-thousand square foot building is gutted. Walls kept collapsing even while we were doing interviews.
"There it goes, there it goes, watch out, building wall falls. (Thud, crowd starts to cheer.)"
The decision to let it go was for fire crew safety; they knew of the dangers from years of training in it.
Deputy Chief Dave Owens, Ogden Fire Dept: "Holes were in it, if you crawled around on the floors, and that you had a chance of falling two or three stories."
Officials say the fire is suspicious.
Chief Mike Mathieu, Ogden Fire Dept.: "This building is not occupied. There's an alarm on it because of the location and occasionally we'd have some transient folk gain access."
A timeline shows trouble starting to smolder. First a burglary alarm at 8:30 pm, to which police responded.
Lt. David Tarran: "Ogden Police Dept.: "From our examination of the exterior, the building was secure, no sign of forced entry."
Then about forty minutes later, a fire alarm went off.
Crews had to back away from the raging flames.
Jared Jarnigan, Witness: "The first time we were out here was for a couple hours."
The fire captivated hundreds. Around 10 am, this woman came out to see for herself. She was intrigued by her friend's description....
Megan Minkema, Witness: "We're like, ‘Let's go check it out and see if it's burning.' Sadly enough, it is."
Brian Larson, Witness: "I was in shock because that's where we would go before Halloween. It was a haunted house."
Lt. David Tarran: "It's collected quite a crowd for us. Seems like every time a wall caves in, there's a whoop and a holler from the people."
But some watched quietly. The fire ended a political debate over the future of building.
Robert Cato, Ogden-Weber Museum Committee: "We have tried desperately to save the building. It is a historically significant structure. It would have been an ideal location for a museum."
This local historian says his committee lobbied Ogden city for months to convert the abandoned 100-year old candy factory. Architects told them, with some work it could be structurally sound. According to an article, the city thought it was cheaper to demolish it. Whatever the fate of this building was meant to be is no more.
The building was also used as a warehouse and a Halloween haunted house. Recently, developers played with the idea of condos.
No word on damage estimates and they expect this to be a long investigation.
