ALTAVISTA, Va. – A fire at the National Center for Healthy Veterans resulted in their main barn being burned to the ground, the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office said.
CCSO said they, along with the Campbell County Fire Department, responded to reports of a fire at the National Center for Healthy Veterans around 8:30 a.m. on Sunday. When they arrived, the main barn was engulfed in flames and fully burned to the ground. There were no injuries reported.
The center helps veterans deal with the impact of Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD. Veterans take part in a nine-month residential program.
“We‘ve got 12 guys up in our village right now that are going through our program and they will continue to go through our program,” said Morgan Fisk, the center’s development coordinator. “It might look a little bit different. some of our work therapy might be different.
“We don’t want it to negatively impact the guys that are with us and healing right now. so we’re trying to maintain just as much normalcy as we can.”
There was a Veterans Day Commemoration event planned for November 11 that featured Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears as the keynote speaker, however, it has been canceled due to the incident.
“We are going to rebuild; we‘re not closing our doors,” Fisk said. “We’re going to internally celebrate Veterans Day with our staff tomorrow. We still acknowledge the gravity that this day has and we don’t a tragedy to take us away from being able to celebrate that.”
Fisk said people interested in donating can use the address firerelief@healthyveterans.org. They are also working on developing a list of needed items like computers and office supplies, as the center’s offices were also damaged in the fire.
The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office will be working with the Campbell County Fire Marshal’s Office to investigate the cause of the fire.
We will update you with more information as it becomes available.