FORKS — The old Olympic Theatre, once a thriving movie house which had stood empty for the past 22 years, was destroyed in a fire investigators consider to be “suspicious.”
The landmark at 25 E. Division St. — built in 1930 as a 354-seat theater originally to screen silent movies — was consumed in a fire that began about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, said Clallam County Fire District No. 1 Chief Phil Arbeiter.
“This is under investigation as a suspicious fire,” said Arbeiter, explaining that the electricity to the building had been turned off and that no natural cause was immediately evident.
Hard-working firefighters did not allow flames to spread to nearby structures.
The boarded-up building — which had attracted rodents, transients and mischievous teens, Arbeiter said — was less than 20 feet from a building on Forks Avenue that houses Chinook Pharmacy and Peninsula College and, on the other side, from a bookkeeping business.
“The team did a super job protecting the exposure of the fire to other buildings,” the fire chief said.
Although the fire appeared to have begun at the rear of the two-story wooden building, the origin of the blaze was not clear later Wednesday, Arbeiter said.
“We are still working on the investigation,” he said, adding that he didn’t know when he would have results.
He said he did not know if accelerants were used in the fire.
The building was boarded up a couple of years ago after Arbeiter and Rich Hsu, the current owner, inspected it and found the ground covered in half-burned pieces of tissue paper.
“What was happening was they were breaking in and then to make their way through the building they’d light a piece of tissue on fire,” Arbeiter said.
“Then as it burned down, they would just drop it on the ground.”
When asked if that could have been the cause of the fire, he repeated that an investigation is in progress.
Forks Mayor Bryon Monohon said the City Council in 2005 had asked Hsu about his plans for the boarded-up building, but nothing had developed since.
Hsu could not be contacted for comment on Wednesday.
“That building was always a concern because it was such a vulnerable building,” Monohon said.
“I’m just thankful that when the day came and it burned that it didn’t take any of the other businesses with it.”
One window in the larger complex on Forks Avenue had a vinyl window, which began to melt and then cracked, but that appeared to be the only damage to any other structures, Arbeiter said.
The Olympic Theatre was constructed in 1930 by Bert and Grace Fletcher, said their grandson Bert Fletcher, who now lives in Port Angeles.
His grandparents ran the theater as a silent movie venue before upgrading to sound.
His father, Henry Fletcher, bought the business from his parents when he returned from the South Pacific in 1947 after World War II.
Henry and his wife, Estene, ran it together, their son said.
“My dad was killed in a truck accident on Morse Creek hill [east of Port Angeles] in 1950, and my mother and I were left with it and continued to run it,” he said.
Fletcher, now 75, began working at the theater when he was 13.
He ran the concession stand until he went to college, and ran the projection booth briefly upon his return.
He and his mother shuttered the building, and it has not been open as a business since 1988, he said.
In 1999 or 2000, Fletcher and his mother sold the building to Hsu, the current owner.
“It did fair business during most of the years, except toward the very later years,” Fletcher said.
“During the war, with the Navy base here in Forks, it was full every night because there were hundreds of extra families out here and Navy personnel.”
The Quillayute Airport once housed a naval auxiliary air station built in the 1940s.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
