No One Injured When Former Blackey Hospital Burns Down

Fire officials still don’t know what started the fire that destroyed the 101-year-old former Blackey hospital Sunday. Now a private home, neighbors spotted the smoke around 1:30pm and called 911 but Letcher Fire Chief Wallace “Spanky” Bolling Jr. tells the Mountain Eagle the four story structure went up so fast, it burned down in less than hour. He says because of the intensity and speed of the fire, they focused efforts on making sure it did not spread to other structures. Bolling says no one was hurt.