The roof of the Central Dock Co. building collapsed about an hour after the blaze was reported shortly before 8 a.m., fire officials and witnesses told The World newspaper.
When Coos Bay Fire Department crews first responded, they found only a smoldering fire with a little smoke drifting from broken second-story windows.
But shortly after 8:35 a.m., smoke quickly turned into a 100-foot plume that doubled in height within minutes as flames began to punch through the roof and shattering glass fell to the dock pavement.
Firefighters declared the fire under control at 9:37 a.m., but ashes and cinders continued to rain down near the dock and several blocks away.
Coos Bay officials had planned to revive the nearby dock site, a former landing for wood products, as a new home for the Coos County Historical Museum. The plan grew from a promise of $1 million toward the museum from an anonymous donor who specified the building be constructed along U.S. Highway 101.
Several members of the family that owns the Central Dock building saw the fire.
``It employed a lot of longshoremen, a lot of the football players that worked in town, lots of hard work,'' said Jeannette Brunell, whose family has owned the building since 1948.
Over the decades, the Central Dock was the shipping site for wood chips to Japan, lumber to Europe and even whole houses to Iran. The building had been abandoned six months ago, Brunell said, adding the family was negotiating to sell the waterfront landmark.
``A lot of history, going up in smoke,'' said her daughter, Anna Brands.
