Friday the 13th has always been a lucky day for me and this time it turned out to be lucky for Pymander as well. On August 13th at 4am a fire broke out in the abandoned restaurant on the other side of the brick wall in my store. By the time Layla and I got to the store at 10am the fire was out but not before it gutted the building next door. Fire trucks from 5 towns were battling the blaze in an effort to save the block. I am very grateful and astonished because there was no damage to the store! We do sometimes smell smoke but there is no smoke damage that we can detect. Mostly you smell it when outside or close to the brick wall.

I have the best landlord in Norwalk, probably anywhere, and he had an air scrubber placed in the store that same morning. I called it the beast. It looked like a huge plastic crate and it sounded like a jet engine. After that they cleaned the ceiling, shampooed the rugs and cleaned out the air ducts!

We don't know how the first started. The investigation is still underway but the paper said they are testing for accelerants. The tenants sleeping above the restaurants had to jump out of the windows, some onto the train tracks and some broke their legs, none were killed. It was a miracle that a policeman driving by noticed the smoke at 4am and immediately called the fire station. I shudder to think what could have happened. I am so grateful that none of us were hurt and that the Pymander angels were with us that morning.

Here are the links for the newspaper articles and blogs:

http://www.thehour.com/story/490256

http://www.thehour.com/story/490283

http://www.thehour.com/story/490307

http://www.yourct.com/2010/08/devastating-fire-on-wall-street/#more-7713