Thankfully, everyone made it out safely and no one was injured in the least. The fire erupted in a stairwell on one end of the building, so it was relatively contained and isolated. The sprinkler system kicked into gear and probably had the fire itself put out long before the firemen arrived. The hallways on that end of the building were flooded from the accumulating water and clouds of black smoke were pouring out of one of the windows in the stairwell. The damage to the building was minimal — fortunately — although it will still cost quite a bit to vacuum the water out of the carpet on all floors, repair part of the ceiling on one level where the weight of the water burst through the second floor to the ground floor, replace one huge window in the stairwell that the firemen broke to clear the smoke, and so forth.
As luck would have it, our busiest weekend of the entire year falls three weeks from today. I don't know yet how that is going to affect the business or whether all the repairs can be made in time.
© 2007 Sapphire @ Blogspot.com
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