USVI-On-Line

Top 3 likely causes would be electrical, commercial cooking equipment (if they had any), or, in a location like that, lightning. Electrical sources are #1 causes of commercial fires by far due to overloading, poor installation, etc.
If they had commercial cooking equipment up there, sometimes you get fires due to problems with the automatic dry chemical systems, lack of high temperature limit switches, grease fires that spread up into the ductwork, etc. Plus, a mountaintop location should probably have lightning arrestor systems.
I wonder if they have insurance, and if so, who would write that and at what price, considering the water supply, FD response time, and probability of maximum loss? If they don’t have something like replacement cost coverage, it could be cost prohibitive to rebuild.

Christine, myself, John, and Sheila were there on April the 7th...I'm glad we got to see it.

word on the street is that it was recently sold for 6M. as to the parrots, they have been gone for sometime.

The day pj and I were leaving in May, Rachel took us up that way since the Carnival parades were going on down below. It was the first time we had been that far up on STT and I was amazed at the views. Hope there is action to rebuild and get the people back to work. This is not a good time to be out of work, here or on the islands.

Here is a pic from the Source today - <a href="http://www.onepaper.com/stthomasvi/?p=1 ... 647</b></a>

<img src="/images/mountain-top-blaze.jpg">

This is the great thing about the VI:

"There was a tremendous display of intergovernmental support," George said. "The community also came out in support, showing that when everybody's working together, we can overpower anything."

What a disaster. I hadn't seen that photo. You can see a sliver of Magens through the rubble - see it? Thank goodness the gorgeous view is still there.

Shocking and Sad. We were there and had banana daiquiris that afternoon. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours before the fire.

That night we saw from our balcony what looked like an orange/red glow. We just figured it was the red flashing lights reflecting off the clouds. I even said it looks like something is on fire up there. Then the next morning I get an email on facebook saying it had burned. We were actually planning on heading up there for the first time this trip....that did not happen obviously

Gromit wrote:While I'm sorry to see any business affected like this I was never much of a fan.

I had a friend who worked up there and was a bartender. She made the "world famous banana daiquiries" that they charged a TON of money for and she always felt so bad cause she knew she was totally ripping people off with the sub par watered down drinks. She worked there for years.

It was a nice view though.

They used to house some exotic birds up there who did tricks for the tourists. I hope they are OK.

Gromit -- did they have the birds at MT? I only saw them at Paradise Point.

Too bad about the drinks, that's for sure. They were pretty watered down and not at all what I expected. I waited years to finally have one -- and did so just this past December.

I can't imagine something coming back there very soon, since the $$ situation is so bad. Who'd want to invest in a MT-type venture now? Maybe in 3 years or so.

Regards,

Cat