The good news for the Magic Twig Community was that their beloved guitars and amps, banjos and washboards, and vintage reel-to-reel recorders probably weren't incinerated Thursday night.

The bad news was that all the musicians could do Friday was stand outside the burned Church Avenue warehouse that had been their practice space. The now-condemned building was off-limits to anyone who wanted to retrieve whatever survived the fire.

"You can't have someone go in and get their stuff and have the roof fall in on them," Roanoke Fire-EMS spokeswoman Tiffany Bradbury explained Friday evening.

So for the Magic Twigs -- a collective of about eight musicians who in different combinations make up about 11 bands -- and the other tenants of the 30 or so rental units in the large structure, the day was a long, chilly wait.

Firefighters and police had little to tell them. The fire's cause is still undetermined, and damage is so severe that it may never be pinned down, Roanoke police arson investigator Allen Williams said. No one was injured in the fire, which crews battled late into the night Thursday.

There was a flurry of activity midafternoon Friday as police said they had found explosives and cleared bystanders from the 700 block of Church Avenue Southeast.

A state police bomb squad removed whatever it was, and city police and firefighters declined to give details of what was found. First Sgt. R.C. Chappell of the Virginia State Police said the commonwealth's attorney's office was being consulted about possible charges tied to the material.

Owners Richard and Nancy Dearing could not be contacted, though some tenants said they had talked to them and had hopes that a way could be found to get inside.

Decades ago, the burned building was the Ideal Laundry and Dry Cleaners. Listed at nearly 36,000 square feet in online city records, the structure most recently housed a variety of cabinet, paint and auto shops, rehearsal spaces and more, said Capt. Ronnie Campbell of the Roanoke Fire-EMS department.

Members of the Magic Twig Community said the building had no sprinkler system or smoke alarm that they knew of. Virginia law requires smoke detectors only for certain buildings, including college dormitories and others with one or more dwelling units.

The Magic Twigs rented two rooms, each about 20 feet by 20 feet, on the building's second floor. The fire apparently didn't reach them, but it buckled the steel grid supporting the ceiling over the cavernous central area of the structure. To reach their rehearsal spaces, the musicians would have to cross beneath the grid, and a structural engineer ruled Friday that wasn't safe.

Consoling themselves with tantalizing digital photos Campbell took that seemed to show their gear unharmed, the Magic Twigs said a show that three of their bands are playing Wednesday at the Jefferson Center will be a benefit for Doug Cheatwood and the Bastards of Fate, a Roanoke band that did lose equipment in the fire.

"We've immediately tried to find every instrument we can from friends," Daniel Cundiff said of the upcoming show by Magic Twig bands the Sad Cobras, Sunking! and the Young Sinclairs.

The multi-instrumentalist held onto hope that his own gear might be retrieved before the show.

"Maybe we'll play with our real instruments," Cundiff said. "If we do and they're covered with soot, we're not going to wipe it off."