(From The Northern Virginia Daily dated Wednesday 10 June 2009.)

FRONT ROYAL -- Town and county officials have agreed to secure the fire-damaged McKay House so that authorities can search the remains to determine if anyone was in the structure when it burned.

Patrick Farris, executive director of the Warren Heritage Society, has said the house on Winchester Road near Reliance Road was built by Robert McKay Jr., possibly the first settler in Warren County, between 1731 and 1734 and was the oldest surviving structure in the county.

More then 50 percent of the structure has been destroyed.

Following Monday's Town Council meeting, the panel agreed to pay half of the estimated $20,000 to secure the structure with the county paying the other half. The property is jointly owned by the town and the county.

"I think it's a very historic part of Warren County and we'd like to preserve it for the time being until we see if the historical society would be interested in restoring it or maybe some other individual," Board of Supervisors Chairman Archie A. Fox said Tuesday. "I think there's a technicality that would allow us to go forward with that small amount in an emergency situation."

David Beahm, building official for Warren County, said Tuesday that Cline Construction Inc. of Front Royal has been contracted to secure the house and should begin the three-day process on Thursday.

"The main portion that's going to be stabilized is going to be east wall," Beahm said. "What they will end up doing will be encasing that wall with C-Channel. It looks like a piece of steel with two legs on it. The chimney portion of it would be circled in two spots to try to maintain the integrity. The rest of it would have C-Channel in four different locations run vertically."

Fire and Rescue Chief Richard E. Mabie said an animal bone was discovered at the site, but authorities have not been able to conduct a more thorough search because the structure is unstable.

"That's the one thing we really haven't been able to do is get in there and dig through the debris and rock and so forth," Mabie said. "We want to try to be thorough in the investigation, but we want to also make sure that it wasn't a vagrant or somebody that may have been staying in the house that actually set the fire and maybe perished in the fire.

"That's one of the main things that we want to do, and we can't do that unless they stabilize what's left. It's too dangerous to send somebody in there."

Since the May 31 blaze, recent storms have caused the majority of one of the two remaining chimneys to come down, Mabie said.

"The only thing that I can emphasize is that right now it's dangerous," Mabie added. "The walls could still come down. Every time that we get a storm or something, it makes it even weaker. So this is kind of one of those deals that we're in quite a hurry to go ahead and get this thing braced up so we can finish our job and hopefully we'll get a couple of years of stability of what's left up there."

Mabie has said the fire was spotted by personnel from the North Warren Volunteer Fire Department at 12:28 a.m. on May 31 when someone saw "a column of smoke and a glow."

It took about a half hour to find out where the fire was, Mabie said, adding that personnel had to walk back into the woods to find the house.

"By then it had taken pretty much possession of whole second floor and roof," Mabie has said.

The blaze is under investigation by the Warren County Fire and Rescue Department and the Warren County Sheriff's Office, with assistance from the Front Royal Police Department, according to Warren County Fire and Rescue Department Lt. Gerry Maiatico.

Maiatico has said authorities have not ruled out any possible cause, including arson.