14-Year-Old Arrested for Alleged Arson After Fire Destroys Nearly 180-Year-Old Mill in New York

A teenager is facing legal trouble after a fire engulfed a historic mill in New York.

On Saturday, May 31, the blaze broke out at the Victory Mill in the village of Victory Mills, the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) said in a press release.

A 14-year-old has since been charged with arson after the incident, CBS 6 Albany reported, citing Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo. (Sources said the same to WNYT.)

According to CBS 6 Albany, the charge will be handled in family court.

The mill, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is nearly 180 years old, according to the Village of Victory’s website. It began operation in 1846 but has been closed for over two decades since 2000.

Officials responded to the mill fire at 2:27 p.m. local time after a call about the blaze. The fire had already spread significantly throughout the building at that time, the sheriff’s office said.

First responders from several agencies reported to the scene, and traffic was blocked off in the surrounding area, according to live footage of the blaze captured by WNYT.

The footage, taken around 4:00 p.m., shows a thick, towering smoke cloud, which WNYT’s Zach Richter said was visible about 2 miles away from the actual mill.

“The entire building is up in flames,” Richter said in the video. “People were telling us that this is the Hogwarts in the neighborhood, the Victory Mill. It’s a large mill.”

According to Ryan Campbell, chief of the Victory Mills Fire Department, there was no one in the building, so firefighters took a “defensive approach.”

“We’ve already made the call that nobody is going into the structure unless there was immediate life at risk. We had no reports of immediate life when I got on scene,” Campbell told WNYT.

He added, “I was told that there was nobody in the structure at that point. It was fully involved, so we took a complete defensive approach to it.”

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An eyewitness told WNYT that there were “embers going as far as the eye can see” during the blaze.

“The flames have been coming. I could feel the heat just standing by that fence,” they continued to the outlet. “You could see things collapse and you could hear things collapse as it’s been going.”

By the early evening, the fire was “under control,” according to the sheriff’s office, which added that Saratoga County Cause and Origin is among the agencies working the case.

The cause of the fire is “currently under investigation,” per the SCSO.

The SCSO did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment on Sunday, June 1.