Yesterday’s fire at Utah State University’s Extension Facility in St. George has resulted in an apparent total loss. Brian Higgenbotham is the Associate Vice President for the extension. He says it’s going to be difficult to put a dollar value on the damage to this center of community education.
“In St. George we actually have, we had I should say, a very nice facility that had conference rooms, and rooms for demonstrations for some of our family consumer science programs, also had large area for our 4H,” he says.
Higgenbotham says county and insurance investigators are assessing the overall damage but water damage seems to be the biggest factor right now.
He says the outpouring of the community, businesses and even fellow schools has been very encouraging.
“You know we continue to have a strong commitment and look forward to rebuilding and continuing to offer great services there,” says Higgenbotham
He says it’s fortunate the fire was discovered before there were many people around and the handful of faculty there evacuated without incident.