Help a neighbor out?

Wed 6 Aug 2014 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

The other night there was a fire in the Paragon Arts building in Easthampton, the refurbed warehouse where we have our office and a storage unit for overstock. We got off pretty lightly: sooty water came under the door and messed up a couple of rugs (or: they soaked it up and stopped it spreading further) and some boxes of books got wet. We’re still waiting for our insurance person to call us back about that.

The fire was on Monday night but I found out about it when I got the paper early on Tuesday morning. So I went on with the usual routine: feed kid and take her to summer camp, then hightailed it over here to catch up.

The fire was across the hall from our office. Marlene Rye, the artist whose studio the fire started in, lost a lot of work plus she had to cancel the three week summer arts camp for kids that she teaches. She has a fundraiser here. On the other side of the wall is Show Circus Studio. Their big mats soaked up a lot of water so had to be dried. They put out a call for help and many, many volunteers answered from all over the valley: that was incredible to see. Their summer camp was cancelled yesterday but, impressively, is back on today. The fire was on the third floor so studios (and the mailboxes!) on the second and first floors were also damaged — see Maggie Nowinski’s post here. At some point there may be a fundraiser/art party of some sort and we’ll spread the word if it happens.

We’re very grateful that the sprinklers went off, that they only went off in the studio with the fire, that the firefighters came so quickly, and that the cleaning crew were here yesterday who said that this recommended janitorial company is perfect for the job. I’m still waiting on the insurance person and hoping that the cleaning crew are gong to clean our overstock room (in which the lights no longer work, ooh, spooky) but overall we’re knocking on wood, trying to help neighbors, very glad to still be here surrounded by too many books and tchotchkes, and trying to continue as if it were a normal Wednesday. We also plan to move to new place so we are looking for good long haul trucking insurance services.

Here’s today’s story in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (damn the paywall!), here’s a slideshow from MassLive, and here’s the fundraiser again.

ETA: here is the fundraiser for the artists on the first and second floors whose work was destroyed by the water pouring down from above.

ETA2: you can see the very small amount of damage we sustained in these photos. In terms of books to toss: about 400. Time? Days!