By Janine L. Weisman/Daily News staff

TIVERTON - As she raced to the burning Tiverton Yacht Club on Tuesday morning, the first thing on Leslea Berglund's mind was whether she would still have a job as a sailing instructor.

Then Berglund's mind turned to the wooden and brass plaque hung on a wall just two weeks ago in honor of her late father, Bob Berglund, who died of cancer last June at age 59. He had been in charge of the yacht club's sail training program.

"The firefighters were looking all over," Berglund said. "We can't find it."

The official cause of the blaze, which destroyed the Victorian mansion at 58 Riverside Drive, near the foot of the Sakonnet River Bridge, was ruled as faulty electrical wiring. But club members say the loss is more than just a building.

"We lost a lot of memories, pictures, trophies," said Commodore Stephen DePaola, who surveyed the charred remains of the clubhouse about 4:45 p.m. as an excavator was preparing to raze the upper stories. The town's building official and fire chief ordered the building demolished because of safety concerns. An insurance adjuster visited the site late in the morning.

The Fire Department received several calls about the fire, the first recorded at 4:39 a.m. Firefighters arrived to find the 21/2-story building fully engulfed in flames and brought it under control within 40 minutes. The building was empty, and no injuries were reported.

Fire Chief Alan R. Jack said the fire started inside an exterior wall in the building's northeast corner off a 11/2-foot wide empty space behind the kitchen. Jack said the fire was burning for an extended period of time before it was detected.

"The fire had its way within the building," Jack said. "It exploded and broke out all the windows."

"It's unfortunate. It had so much of a head start that there was nothing we could do."

Fire departments from Portsmouth and Fall River, Mass., responded to the scene, while Fall River and Westport, Mass., covered the Tiverton department for mutual aid assistance throughout the morning.

Town tax assessment records indicate the building was built on or before 1930, but fire and yacht club officials believe the 2,734- square-foot building dated to the 1880s. The town's assessment for the building as of the revaluation dated Dec. 31, 2002, is $354,500.

Throughout the day, onlookers and television camera crews gathered to survey what was left of the clubhouse. The yacht club has 200 memberships, including families, couples and individuals, who routinely book the clubhouse for functions, including some graduation parties that had been planned for this month, said house co-chairwoman Polly Ney. The calendar that listed the bookings was destroyed in the fire, she added.

"My children grew up here. They participated in the swimming program, in the sailing program," Ney said.

"My kids are devastated. They spent years here," Joyce Kiley said.

"It's an old building. It was beautiful. It's sad because it's one of Tiverton's landmarks," said Bluff Avenue resident Beverly Backe, who was out with her two golden retrievers, Annie and George, for their regular afternoon walk along Riverside Drive.

DePaola vowed that summer programs slated to begin in three weeks will still go ahead. The club will use its garage building as a temporary office once electrical service can be activated. The club also will have to find a way to provide electrical service to the in-ground swimming pool, which it had just finished prepping and originally planned to open next weekend. The Barrington, Bristol and East Greenwich yacht clubs had already called him, offering the use of their facilities.

"Our plans right now are to get everything operational so we can have a nice summer season and start plans on our new clubhouse," DePaola said.

"No one was hurt, so that's what was important."

Staff writer Matt Sheley contributed to this report.