BIG SPRING, Texas — Over the weekend, the Dora Roberts Community Center in Big Spring was hit hard by a fire.
While the cause of the fire is still being investigated, the community center is considered totaled for all intents and purposes.
Roddy Fair is the parks supervisor for Big Spring. He found out from the city that the center was hit by the flames.
“6 in the morning on Saturday, they called me and they were asking me if we were over here and stuff," Fair said. "I just explained to them that we weren’t. They were just trying to figure out how the fire started.”
Fair and his crew within Parks and Recreation quickly went to work on the building, cleaning up glass and boarding up windows to keep unwanted visitors out.
Much of the damage was in the back of the building, evidenced by the twisted metals, broken windows and charred walls.
Since the center is out of commission, it's going to take a while to get it fully back up and functioning. Fair predicts that it could take anywhere from months to a year to bring the community center back up to speed.
But the building itself wasn't the only thing to be impacted. The Big Spring Senior Center ran their Senior Center Meal Service out of the community center.
Seniors came down to pick up food, but also to sit with friends and enjoy the views the center had to offer.
“I think it'll impact a lot, because they were so comfortable coming here," Fair said. "A lot of them, they eat lunch here, they park their vehicles here, they go inside, they socialize, so it's gonna be a big impact on them.”
For now, the meal service will be running out of Scenic Mountain Medical Center.
“You have a lot of people who are dependent on those meals, so it’s very important for us to help where we can," said Scott Williams, food services director with SMMC. "Because sometimes it could be the matter of someone having a meal for the day or not. So we definitely see that as an important aspect, and we want to do what we can to help out.”