CAVE CITY -- Cave City firefighters battled two fires at a vacant church Wednesday evening that razed the century-old building just south of the Sharp County town, officials said.
Members of the Cave City Fire Department were called to the Hickory Valley Church on U.S. 167 about a mile south of the town at 5:37 p.m. Wednesday, said Fire Inspector Justin Wilson. Firefighters found a bundle of limbs set afire inside the church, Wilson said.
They quickly put the blaze out, but were called back at 8:40 p.m. and found the church engulfed in flames.
"There's nothing left," Wilson said. "It's burned to the ground."
No one was injured, he said. Seventeen firefighters responded in the 90-degree heat.
The church was founded in 1909, Wilson said. It held its last service in the late 1970s and had been vacant since. There were no utilities turned on at the church, he said.
It's not the first time firefighters have responded to a suspicious fire at the structure, Wilson said. In the fall, someone set a pile of leaves on fire inside the building.
Officials have not determined what caused the second fire, but they deemed it suspicious.
State Desk on 07/02/2016