‘It’s destroyed. It’s gone,’ fire chief says of old elementary school

Flames lit up the sky early Friday morning when the old Juliette elementary and middle school was ablaze.

“Evidently there was a neighbor who lives by there. He looked out his window and flames were already coming through the roof,” Jones County Fire Chief Don Graham said.

Firefighters got a call just before 6:45 a.m. that the now privately owned buildings were on fire on J.H. Aldridge Road, to the east of the Ocmulgee River outside the village of Juliette.

Crews worked for about an hour to gain control of the flames.

“We went into defensive mode,” Graham said.

Monroe County firefighters were called for mutual aid due to the size of the fire near the border of the two counties.

“We look out for each other. Thank God for Monroe County,” Graham said.

Once the fire was out, the building was too hot to initially investigate the cause of the fire that gutted the structure.

The old school, which was built in 1955 and housed kindergarten through ninth grade, was being renovated for apartments.

Electricity was still hooked up, he said.

Graham suspects the fire might have started in the kitchen, where there was a working refrigerator and an old fireplace.

It’s possible the fire was simmering all night and broke through the roof just before dawn.

“It’s destroyed. It’s gone,” Graham said. “Nothing but the brick walls are standing.”

Students moved closer to Gray in the ‘60s, he said, but it had been used for housing in recent years.

“It was actually a nice-looking place,” he said.

This story was originally published August 25, 2017 at 12:51 PM with the headline "‘It’s destroyed. It’s gone,’ fire chief says of old elementary school."