OryCon's old home burns!

[scott_sanford]

The old Red Lion hotel on Jantzen Beach caught fire about 3AM Sunday morning, and quickly turned into a larger problem than the fire department could handle. Luckily, no nearby buildings were engulfed (I'm sure the large parking lots helped), although Interstate 5 is reported as "affected" by the huge fire right next to it. The local KGW TV station has footage here, and a fuller article.

I'm still getting irregular reports from KumoriCon, the anime convention currently being held across the river, on account of not being there myself. (See the river view in the video? The building at the right holds KumoriCon.) As several people have commented already, at least the fire burned the con hotel without any fans in it.

Comments

[great-penguini.livejournal.com]

I know of the people who own the building... and I actually wouldn't be surprised if it burned under suspicious circumstances for insurance money. They're the type of folks to do that sort of thing. But I'm not going to point fingers or name names until the reports are all in... but I'm not the only one saying it could be for insurance purposes... I am one who does know what the owners of the property are like, though. Unscrupulous, penny-pinching, illegal-dumping asses who think that screwing people over is perfectly acceptable. I don't know if they owned it when OC was using it, but they own several properties around town and are not very nice folks...

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I went up on Sunday afternoon and took rather a lot of snapshots, which aren't on the net yet. But a few photos by others:

[perkyandproud.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was sure something! But I am totally waiting on that Arson report...tsk.