MANCHESTER — A “suspicious,” fast-moving fire destroyed a vacant building on Manchester Street that apparently has long been used by numerous homeless people.

“There was no power to the building. We're thinking it's definitely suspicious and we're investigating it,” District Fire Chief Robert Corbeil said outside the burnt three-story building that sits across from the New Horizons for New Hampshire soup kitchen and homeless shelter.

Rich Converse, who said he is staying at New Horizons, said he called 911 to report the fire and saw “four or five people running out of” the building.

“That thing went up fast,” he said. “There was a bunch of smoke, then there were flames shooting out.”

The fire was reported shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday and went to two alarms, Corbeil said. He said nobody was in the building when fire crews arrived, but he said the building was not secured and that the fire essentially finished the job of destroying the building.

“People have been getting in there and destroying it,” he said.

Converse also said people go in and out of the building “all the time” and said he knew an elderly man who was staying in a first-floor room.

The building's owner, Fernando Hilarion of Manchester, said the building has been vacant for six years and that he has boarded up doors and windows numerous times. At the fire scene, he got into a brief argument with a firefighter who told him “there was no way” Hilarion had properly secured the structure.

“If you go around the building, you can see it's been boarded up,” he said, pointing to windows that still had plywood boards blocking them. “The (firefighter) was telling me I wasn't taking care of the building. But it's been boarded up.”

Hilarion said people breaking into the building has “been a problem.”

No firefighters were injured in the blaze, which was extinguished about a half-hour after firefighters arrived, Corbeil said.

The fire started on the first floor in the vacant shoe store and quickly moved up to the third floor. Utilities to the building were shut off years earlier, according to Corbeil.

Damage is estimated at between $100,000 to $150,000, with major fire and water damage to the first floor and moderate damage to the upper two floors and roof.

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Tim Buckland may be reached at tbuckland@unionleader.com.