Cause of Mineola Country Club fire under investigation

MINEOLA — The Mineola Country Club is “a total loss,” according to the Fire Marshal, after a fire broke out early Monday morning, our news partner KETK reports. “When the first crews first got here, most of the structure was involved in the fire at that time,” said Mineola Fire Marshal David Madsen. Officials said the call came in around 12:30 a.m., and crews arrived at the scene on State Loop 564 just before 1 a.m. and it took about three to four hours to put out. The golf course and swimming pool weren’t touched by the flames, but officials said everything else was affected by the fire.

Manager Allen Brock said the fire department had been on the scene all day. “The entire building is a total loss,” Brock said. “Right now, the bar area is gone, the restaurant is gone. The pro shop, the ceilings have caved in on it. What we’re looking at now is setting up some sort of temporary building or services to where we can at least get the golf course back in operation within the next two or three days. The bar area is going to take us a little bit longer, but we will get back to that point.”

Brock explained just how much this loss impacted people. “It’s just heartbreak,” said Brock. “It’s total devastation. We’ve had people come in early this morning and saw it on your tv show or they saw it on social media, and they come in and they stand and start to cry because this has become a home to a lot of people.”

The country club and its members are looking to the future and a new country club. “We’re not going to just walk away,” Brock said. “We will go through the processes that we have to have with our insurance. We’re going to set up a temporary building to start with so that we can get back into golf operations.”

Brock added that golf operations will be back up and running quickly.

He also said the building was insured for about a million dollars and that a new bigger and better club building will be built over the next few years. “Being more modern is going to help us a lot,” Brock said.” This country club has been here since 1932 and a lot of the structures were older. So now, we would like to have architects design us a more modern structure.”

Brock and Madsen both told our news partner KETK that while they still don’t have an answer to what caused the fire, they said they’re confident the cause will be determined in the next couple of days.