VIDEO: A piece of the decades old Vaillancourt Fountain briefly caught fire on Wednesday, as crews resumed disassembling the massive modernist art piece in San Francisco.
The smoke was so intense at the start that the nearby Paddle Board Courts had to be temporarily evacuated. The fire was put out quickly and the courts re-opened within minutes.
The park rangers say the crew disassembling the fountain was cutting the structure with a blow torch when the rubber tubing and debris inside caught fire.
“I think it is ironic that it would catch fire and it just shows you that it is beyond repair. It needs to go,” said Howard Palmer of San Francisco.
This is the first piece of the 710-ton modern fountain art structure to be removed. Crews first arrived last week to begin disassembling the fountain, but they paused so an appeals court could review an effort by a preservationist group to keep the fountain.
However, the court has denied that appeal, so crews returned today to resume jack hammering and weld cutting it apart.
The Vaillancourt Fountain has been controversial ever since it was first installed in 1971 and the artist, Armand Vaillancourt, sprayed paint on it.
