AMHERST, N.Y. — The Hindu Cultural Society of Western New York building in Getzville suffered serious damage after a fire broke out late Thursday night.
Crews were notified of a smoke alarm activation just before 11:00 Thursday night. Getzville firefighters arriving at the scene on North French Road found smoke coming from the second floor, and called in a second alarm. In total, five other fire companies assisted with the fire.
According to fire officials, firefighters faced heavy smoke conditions inside the building. They were able to contain the fire to a second floor worship area, but say other parts of the building suffered heavy smoke and water damage.
"We found the fire in the middle of the room, and it was heavy black smoke so it took a little bit to find the seed of the fire. We made an extensive large area search to see, just to double check, if there was any other people inside the building. We noticed that there was no one else in the building at that time," said Getzville Fire Chief Daric Will.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation by the Amherst Fire Inspectors office, but police said Friday afternoon it is not being investigated as an arson at this time.
The Cultural Society told its members Friday on Facebook they were saddened to inform them they had a fire at their beautiful temple, adding that the temple will be closed until further notice for the investigation to continue and repair work to start.
"It's a very large building. Holds hundreds of people and luckily it wasn't during the day when there's normally a full crowd of people in that building," said Chief Will.
Damage to the building is $500,000, plus $250,000 worth what was inside was damaged.
The Getzville Fire Chief explained how they'll figure out the cause.
"They're looking for burn patterns where the hottest part of the building was, there the most damage of the building was. They're going through each step to find out where this fire was caused. They're going through if there was any footage or anything like that. They're trying to find out information that they can get that can help them," Will said.
When 2 On Your Side called the Cultural Society Friday morning, they told us with the investigation still going on and the damage done to the building, they're asking people to stay away from the building so everybody stays safe.