Firefighters are worried that arson may be to blame for the fire. This is an area where the homeless have camped out before and police heard some talk that has made them suspicious.
The fire was raging when firefighters first arrived at the abandoned skating rink in Hayward on Mission Boulevard. The call came in at 3:30 am Monday morning. Firefighters got the fire out in about 45 minutes. There is still concern about hot spots, especially since a roof and a wall collapsed.
"When you have a building like this, when you have a roof collapse, you're going to have a lot of burn underneath the roofing material. So, until we can get in there and get some foam on it, we are going to have some hotspots going, then we are going to have a primary search to make sure the building was empty," said Craig Bueno, Hayward Fire Chief.
Police said bystanders heard some people, possibly some transients, make some comments that has them all suspicious, authorities would not elaborate. Firefighters say this area has attracted squatters in the past. The roller rink has been closed down and abandoned since 2003.
Mission Boulevard was closed between Industrial Parkway and West Tennyson Road but has since reopened.
Nobody has been hurt while fighting this fire, but firefighters are interested to get inside and do a sweep of the building to make sure that no one was inside.
