An Innsbrook Corporate Center fire of undetermined origin destroyed an office building assessed at $1.04 million Saturday night.

It also burned to ashes the work of a Henrico County couple who have plowed their savings and dreams into a therapy center for severely disabled children.

"Out biggest hope right now is to get to another location so we can keep the therapies going that these children need so much," said Cindy Richards, an owner of the Richmond Hope Therapy Center. The unusual center, one of only a few in the country, had recently been expanded to cover the first floor of the office building at 5030 Sadler Place.

A two-alarm fire reported Saturday about 9:30 p.m. left the building a smoldering, almost roofless ruin in which a second-story suite of offices collapsed onto the first floor.

Henrico building official H. Bolman Bowles said yesterday that the building was not required to have sprinklers, either when it was constructed in 1990 or currently. Its 8,000 square feet of floor space and two stories means the building is exempt from mandated sprinkler use by statewide building code regulations.

"But I can guarantee you there will at least be alarms if it is rebuilt and we remain here," said Richards' husband, Michael.

Henrico Fire Department spokesman Capt. Chris Buehren said firefighters have not determined the origin or cause of the fire. But he said that with a sprinkler system or alarm, the fire likely could have been contained to a single room.

"When our units arrived minutes after the call, the building was fully involved" with flames leaping from the roof, he said.

There was no initial effort to enter the building because of the fear of collapse, and efforts were made to keep the fire from igniting nearby buildings, Buehren said.

Yesterday, parents of disabled children, some of the youngsters using wheelchairs and walkers, gathered at the site to support the Richardses and to brace themselves for a difficult future.

"It is going to be very tough for these children, who are hypersensitive and hyperreactive to anything happening in their lives that is out of the ordinary for them," said Melanie Munster, one of whose twin daughters, Ashley, was born with spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy at birth.

"She and her sister [each] weighed 1 pound, 10 ounces at birth and had to be delivered prematurely to save all three of our lives," Munster said.

She and her husband vowed to keep the center going and said many families fear that benefits of their children's past therapies will be lost because of the need for consistent and constant repetition.

The Richardses said the intensive, one-on-one therapies offered at the center specialize in helping children with neurological injuries affecting muscle coordination and other abilities, mostly forms of cerebral palsy. The center helps as many as 50 children a month.

The couple started the center three years ago in Ashland and moved in September 2007 to Innsbrook. Tens of thousands of dollars in special equipment -- from treadmills to full body suits that help a child coordinate movement of specific limbs -- were lost in the fire, Cindy Richards said. Few insurance policies carry coverage for the therapy, which can cost thousands of dollars and can necessitate threeto four-hour sessions five days a week, several times a year, according to the center's Web site.

Richards said she is not sure how much of the equipment she lost is covered by insurance.

"The difference Cindy and her husband have made in our lives and the lives of our children is incalculable," said Jennifer Morris, whose son uses a walker and has ataxia, a balancing problem.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.

Times-Dispatch extern Daniel C. Yates contributed to this report.