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Vickie Peek, Wayne White
OSAGE CITY—Two downtown Osage City businesses, Mink Photography
and Ramblin’ Rose, were completely destroyed by fire Sunday,
but neighboring businesses are also dealing with the aftermath,
including smoke and water damage.
Diane Colstrom, store manager of Duckwalls, 532 Market St., said
she had left the store about 2 p.m. when a store employee called
her and said smoke was coming out of the building across the street.
“So I came back,” Colstrom said. “The fire trucks
were all just getting here then.”
“About six people started carrying things out of Ramblin’
Rose, and then it looked like about 100 people were helping down
the street, too,” said Duckwalls employee Ashley Hargesheimer,
who helped the crowd remove items from the apartments above Radio
Shack. “They thought the fire was just going to keep coming
down the street.”
Amy Punches, owner of Furniture Loft, was working at the store when
she received a call that smoke was coming from 531 Market St., at
about the same time the first fire truck arrived.
“We checked and they said everything was OK,” she said.
“About an hour and a half later we went behind our buildings
(on the south side of Market Street) to check. They said they had
it under control but then it flamed up again.
“We went around front … and asked a firefighter what
we were supposed to be doing and if we should be moving our stuff
out. A firefighter told us to get everything out as fast as we can.”
She said many people helped remove merchandise from stores and belongings
from the second floor apartments above Radio Shack and one of the
Furniture Loft buildings.
Punches owns eight buildings in downtown Osage City. At least three
had smoke damage. Some contents removed from or returned to the
buildings were damaged by water spraying from fire hoses.
“All furniture deliveries are on schedule, and Furniture Loft
and TNT are open for business,” Punches said Monday.
She and her husband, Joe Punches, and their two children, and Tim
and Teresa McCoy, live in the two upstairs apartments. Both families
have been staying with friends and relatives since the fire.
Radio Shack, 523 Market St., was one of the stores that was emptied
by bystanders.
“It took two weeks to stock the store when we first opened,”
owner T.J. McCoy said. “It took 15 minutes to empty the store
Sunday afternoon. Fifty to 100 people helped clear the store out.”
“Several people from Community Covenant Church helped us for
10 hours Monday to restock the store,” He said. “I really
appreciate their efforts. The community really came together.”
McCoy said he was planning to reopen Radio Shack Wednesday.
At Gibson Pharmacy, 521 Market St., “It’s business as
usual today (Monday),” owner Mandy Gibson said. “Everything
was taken out of the store to a secure location yesterday, including
the prescriptions. There were no delays in getting prescriptions
to customers.”
Gibson said there is the smell of smoke in the back room of the
store because the door had been open.
Osage Hardware, 533 Market St., sustained smoke and water damage.
“We will open as soon as possible,” owner Willie Atchison
said. “We are dealing with the challenge of that wall between
us and Mink Photography. It is being looked at for structural damage.
“We are waiting for the insurance adjuster to give us the
go ahead to reopen. We have pretty broad water damage in two storage
parts of the building and relatively significant smoke damage. Smoke
covered everything from front to back.”
“This is a great community that we feel such a part of,”
Atchison said. “We are thankful for the community’s
offers to help and the support extended to us. There was no terrible
damage to products because we were able to get everything out.”
At Schroeder Pharmacy, 535 Market Street, “We opened at 1
o’clock today (Monday),” owner Mike Schroeder said.
“We were able to field phone calls this morning before opening.”
He said everything was taken out of the store Sunday and the basement
had water damage.
At the Osage County Herald-Chronicle, 527 Market St., the office
sustained extensive water and smoke damage.
Co-publisher Chris Faimon said he received a call from an employee
that there was a fire and assumed the newspaper would not be affected
since it was two buildings from the fire. Driving from his parents’
house near Burlingame, he said he could see the smoke from six miles
north of Burlingame.
“Thanks to (Herald-Chronicle employee) Jan Ogleby, our server,
which houses the heart of our newspaper, was rescued, along with
the bound editions of the past five or six years of newspapers,”
Faimon said. “Those items are irreplaceable.
“We were later assisted by (fireman) Bill Orender and (Osage
County Fire Dist. No. 2) Fire Chief Dan Romine and moved the remainder
of our computers to the back of the building, saving many from water
damage.
“Special thanks to the Osage County Senior Center, some quick
networking of computers and a dedicated staff, we were able to get
this week’s newspaper out,” Faimon said.
He said the newspaper office roof will need major repair, and it
has yet to be determined if the building’s structural integrity
will be affected.
The newspaper has secured an interim office at 611 Market St., with
plans to move equipment and open for business at that location Thursday. |
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