Store owner who caught fire in Sanson ‘devastated’

The owner of a Sanson store that caught fire last night is “devastated” and says the two-story building has been reduced to rubble.

Barry Daily has owned Passionz Unique Imports and Home Decor for about nine years, and said he was still in shock this morning after nearly a decade of hard work burned to the ground.

“I am devastated,” he said.

“You build a business for 10 years and you absolutely start it, and in five minutes everything disappears.”

Daily did not yet know the cause of the fire, but said it started at the rear of the building.

He and his wife closed the store around 4.30pm. M. And they left the city to go shopping, but returned quickly shortly after 5 p.m. M. When they started getting phone calls telling them the store was on fire.

“We ran home and saw the flames [while we were] coming back from Feilding. Only the back was on fire when we got there, we thought they could save the store. “

But as soon as one window was smashed, fire took over the rest of the building, he said.

Now it is “just rubble”.

“You wouldn’t even know there’s something there.”

Daily said the location was a “good place” and that it had been doing “December numbers” since the lockdown ended. Now he wasn’t sure what the future held: he had a suspicion that he had only secured the contents of the store, but not the store itself.

You will meet with your insurance provider this morning.

Daily said there was a residence attached to the store that belonged to an elderly woman, which had also caught fire. The woman was not caught in the fire.

He said the house had been there since 1940 and had operated “one of the best restaurants in New Zealand” for about 20 years.

Neighbors and other locals got together last night to make sure everyone was okay and worked together to push the resident’s car out of reach of the fire.

Daily said he spoke to one of the people who pushed the car off the road, who had suffered burns to his hands from pushing the hot metal.

“It seems like everyone came and jumped, and everyone is happy that she’s okay.”

Fire Risk Management Officer Anna Gordon was on the scene this morning to investigate the cause of the fire.

She said it was a good thing that there were smoke detectors installed in the building as it helped the resident escape safely.

The woman was not inside when the fire started, she had come out just before.

Gordon said Fire and Emergency New Zealand was working with police to determine the cause of the fire, but at this stage the investigation had only just begun.

Sanson local Stephen Gill, who lives around the corner, said last night that tanker trucks were forced to go to and from the water reservoir because the main road had no water supply.

A spokeswoman for St John said one person suffered minor injuries in the fire. An ambulance was sent to attend to the person, who did not need hospital treatment.