Mega Fire In Highland Park Impact [[HELM Property)

[Zacha341]

The huge Helm building/ warehouse fire closed the whole strip mall both side of Woodward at Manchester. Schools closed and some relocated from their homes.

Highland Park residents not allowed to return home following warehouse inferno

http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/loca...84371745-story

Chief: Highland Park fire may take week to extinguish

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/new...park/79742504/

[DeLemur]

Unfortunately Reclaim Detroit and and EcoWorks' warehouse was part of that. Lots of reclaimed, deconstructed lumber up in flames. Terrible.

I wonder if their insurance will cover it.

[Bigdd]

The insurance will cover just a tiny fraction I hear. All that unobtainable wood from the Karmanos offices,.. the floors from the DAC,... all those bowling lanes, mountains of old-growth hard-woods,....

The other issue is the trucks were in there with all the house deconstruction equipment,.. and then there's the wood-shop with the massive self-guided saws, sanders, planers, etc, etc, etc.

The insurance won't even get them to first base.

They have a new location they've been working on for a year or so,... and it's about ready I think,.. but now there's nothing to move into it.



The owner of the Helm property had shut the water to the building off recently,. which was odd.

Also,.. none of the fire hydrants on the block worked,.. so the DFD had to run hoses 1-2 blocks away.

That cloud is super toxic. Part of that building was book recycling / distributing,... and other small part was Reclaim Detroit,.. but the biggest part in the middle was the owner's business of recycling things, like computers, old telephones, car bumper covers, appliances, etc, etc, etc. I'd been through there twice last year,.. and all those plastics, circuit boards etc are nasty when they burn.

[Lowell]

Here is how it looked yesterday from the Lodge inbound entering the Davison curve.


Click image^ for larger view.

The building destroyed was also significant in that it once housed the Excello Corporation, famous worldwide for making the fold-out carton and the machinery that manufactured them. Now they are largely gone, like the building. They were once so common and made the milk bottle obsolete. Now they are so rare I had to hunt around the house to find an example, an old carton of Epsom salts.

[jackie5275]

I could still see smoke coming from it this morning.

[DeLemur]

The insurance will cover just a tiny fraction I hear. All that unobtainable wood from the Karmanos offices,.. the floors from the DAC,... all those bowling lanes, mountains of old-growth hard-woods,....

The other issue is the trucks were in there with all the house deconstruction equipment,.. and then there's the wood-shop with the massive self-guided saws, sanders, planers, etc, etc, etc.

The insurance won't even get them to first base.

They have a new location they've been working on for a year or so,... and it's about ready I think,.. but now there's nothing to move into it.



The owner of the Helm property had shut the water to the building off recently,. which was odd.

Also,.. none of the fire hydrants on the block worked,.. so the DFD had to run hoses 1-2 blocks away.

That cloud is super toxic. Part of that building was book recycling / distributing,... and other small part was Reclaim Detroit,.. but the biggest part in the middle was the owner's business of recycling things, like computers, old telephones, car bumper covers, appliances, etc, etc, etc. I'd been through there twice last year,.. and all those plastics, circuit boards etc are nasty when they burn.

Thanks for the information. This is a serious blow to them. All that old growth and effort to pull it out safely. Sad.

[mtburb]

Did any of the explosions crack any glass nearby, even possibly well past 8 Mile?

Also I am at least grateful that the fire didn't jump across Hamilton to the 76 gas pumps. If they did pretty much most of Highland Park would be wiped off the map.

[Zacha341]

You can still smell the toxic smoke. Very serious situation, especially considering what was burning. Horrible lose re. the reclaimed timber.

You can still smell the smoke in the WSU area.... bad air quality:

http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/loca...84425387-story