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A small crowd gathered in the cold air outside theturn-of-the-century Long Island Rail Road station here yesterdayafternoon as a crane ripped the roof off the building. "It's heartsickening," sighed Barbara Berleth, who had worked inside. "I can't imagine why someone would do something like this," said Gemma Ronzoni, who lives nearby.
What someone had done was to burn the place down. Shortly after 4 a.m., investigators said, the green-and-white, stucco-and-wood station was doused with a flammable liquid and set ablaze, leaving it a blackened, smoking shell. It took 20 fire fighters and two trucks half an hour to bring the fire under control.
"It was definitely arson," said George Geyer, commander of the Nassau County Arson Squad, which is investigating along with LIRR police and the Nassau County fire marshal's office....