Firemen worked for over 16 hours hours to get control of a large fire in Penticton on Front Street before the heavy equipment was brought in to demolish the building. Smoke and steam/smoke could be seen for miles Sunday morning.

Slack Alice’s Night Club (123 Front Street), a Chinese restaurant and a liquor story all gutted.

The half block will have to be cleaned of rubble before anything can be built again. Recent fires in the South Okanagan suggest that nothing will happen here for many years. No one is known to be injured.

Fire trucks on scene for so long that they needed to be refueled. Mayor Dan Ashton was at the location of the fire taking photographs but did not talk about the devastation. Fire broke out at about midnight. No one was apparently in the building. Fire Department says fire looked like it started at the back of the Slack Alice Building.