Danville Firefighters succeeded tonight (Thursday) in containing a blaze at the Habitat For Humanity ReStore building. But it still suffered extensive damage. Jonathan Gibson, Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity of Danville, talked with Bill Pickett on the scene about the blaze…
{AUDIO: ‘’We’re still trying to figure out how much damage has even been done. We can see that we’ve lost the box truck and anything that was in the loading dock. And they’re still trying to contain the fire. So we don’t know how extensive the damage is yet.’’}
Gibson says the fire is a huge setback for the local Habitat for Humanity program….
{AUDIO: ‘’The ReStore is actually the main fund-raising effort for everything that Habitat Danville does. This is how we raise money to do houses. This is how we are able to do the housing solutions. This is how we’re able to do everything with the ramps that we do. It’s because of the fund-raising we do through this store…accepting donations and turning around and selling them….This, obviously is a major set-back to all the fund-raising and all the finance efforts for our organization.’’}
And Gibson noted that Thursday had been a normal day of business…
{AUDIO: ‘’We closed down as normal at 5 o’clock. The system was set…alarm. The building was secured. And we don’t know. Sometime I think around 6 o’clock the fire seemed to have started when no one was in the building to our knowledge. And certainly there’s no sign of anyone being in the building. We just don’t know what the cause is yet.’’}
Some off-duty Danville Firefighters were called in to assist with handling the blaze. It resulted with the 400 block of North Vermilion Street (where Habitat is located) being closed for several hours because of firefighting equipment in the area.
The fire hit just as the holidays are approaching, and Gibson says the local Habitat for Humanity program is going to need a lot of help…
{AUDIO: ‘’Please consider making a donation at this time. As soon as we get things around we will have a better way to donate. But even in the meantime you can give a donation of cash, check, money order to our mailing address – which is P.O. Box 901, Danville, Illinois, 61834 – or even calling our number, which is 217-497-4234, and we will connect you with more information that way.’’}
An investigation into the cause of the fire is continuing.
