Oregon Public Broadcasting

A U.S. Forest Service building destroyed by a fire last week in Enterprise was undergoing renovation work.  Workers were applying coats of stain to the structure before the blaze broke out.  David Nogueras has more.

Contractors hired by the building's owner, SeaSide Associates, were performing routine refurbishing work on the log structure. It's not clear if that work had anything to do with the cause of the blaze. Fire investigators are still conducting interviews.

In the meantime, former tenants of the building are getting back to work.

Judy Wing is a spokeswoman with the Wallowa Whitman National Forest. She says last Friday, the visitor's center reopened across the state highway at the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce office. The USDA service center was also displaced by the fire. 

Wing says it's set up shop in a conference room at the Best Western.

Judy Wing: "So everybody's open for business and we're moving forward"

Wing says the Wallowa Whitman National Forest is also in the process of finding short-term and intermediate-term office space for these operations.