WORT 89.9FM Madison
The Victory Fire: One Week Later
So we closed it to no problems. Everything was copacetic and at about 9.54pm I got a phone call on my cell phone saying there's a fire from one of my tenants. So I jumped in the car. I asked if they had called the fire department and they said yes. I jumped in the car and I drove up at wood and thought to myself maybe it's just a small fire. And then as I came around the corner of Atwood and Fair Oaks I saw that the entire street was blocked off and there were more fire trucks than I could easily count. I did a count later. It was seven and I thought to myself it was not a small fire. It wasn't a terrible fire but it wasn't a small fire. And so when you parked what happened? Well I couldn't get that close and I did persuade the police officer closing down the street to let me park relatively close to where it was blocked off. And then I ran up the street and kind of talked my way in through the outer circle of protective custody and was requested to get some keys real quick. So I ran back to my car and got some keys for the upstairs apartment so they wouldn't have to break down the door. And then I crossed the street and watched as they chopped holes in the roof and it was very dramatic. There were actually seven fire trucks. I think there were four ladders and three engines. They weren't all in service. I think the engines left relatively quickly but they were up on the roof and cutting in through the side of the building and extinguishing the fire. Did you see any flames when you got here or was it pretty much contained? There were flames. I saw flames. For a while there was really unclear as to how much damage was going to be done. I mean the fire department I have to say did an amazing job. The cafe that you may have visited with art on the walls is smoky but it looks about the same and that's where we talked. Then Patrick showed me the upstairs apartment which is where most of the damage is. It's where the firefighters were cutting into the roof. You'd never guess based on the amount of damage done stairs. All of the brown stuff is a temporary patch and you can see that the timbers are burned. So I mean there was a lot of fire that you couldn't see like behind the walls and above the ceiling. What does it smell like in here? It smells like a bonfire. So one of the things that we're looking at here, you told me about this earlier, I think just the insulation. This is all the insulation that was between the ceiling and the roof. A layer that thick. So like a centimeter probably. Which is a lot but what is it? It's horse hair. Literally horse hair. These tenants were not here. Yeah their cats were here. Here's another plug for the fire department. The fire department very gently somehow found the cats and put them in a carrier and brought them downstairs. And the cats were pretty relaxed considering they had just been in a massive fire scene. And what was the source of the fire? They don't know for sure but they seem to be pretty sure that it came from a conduit that has been attached to the side of the building but not in use. For decades it probably hasn't been used since the late 70s when there was a little corner grocery store here with an illuminated sign outside. But I don't know if they're 100% sure. That is where the fire started whether or not that's a coincidence or a cause. I don't think they've decided 100% for sure. So when were you finally able to get into the cafe and check it out? The next morning. And what did you see? There were actually no that night. Well you couldn't see a lot that night because all of the power was out but you could see that it was. I mean the cafe just has a big part of one of the walls is missing now. And it's very smoky and full of detritus from the fire. But the apartment upstairs is just completely trash. Had you ever thought about that conduit or anything did you even know it was there? I never gave it a second thought. I knew it was there but no. In fact this is side information but when I opened this shop I loaned the owner of the building $15,000 to change all of the electrical from starting with the great big things on the top of the poles coming into the building. All breaker boxes are new. Everything's pretty much new. So yeah never really thought I never thought that we'd have an electrical fire. And so about how long until you are back in business? Well they've given me really loose estimates. Sorry who's there? It's a company called Paul Davis Restoration and they've been not to give them a picture or anything but they've been great. They came I called them in the middle of the night they had some people here in the morning to like patch everything up. So they had a big team here and as part of the meeting I kind of pressed them and they said we have no idea we have no idea we have no idea. But then they kind of said maybe Thanksgiving and in my experience with building things out you usually have to double what people say. So I'd say that probably means February but we'll see. Have you heard from customers what are people doing for coffee in the meantime? Well I guess sadly they're probably getting coffee somewhere else but I don't know that for a fact and I'd rather not think about it. You know what I don't know won't hurt me. We've gotten a lot of I guess what they would call an outpouring of support and concern from customers. Patrick estimates it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair. He isn't sure yet how much of it insurance will cover. While we spoke he brought up another time the cafe was damaged but from a pretty different source. The era when the Scott Walker protests were happening and I had a I thought a fairly small tasteful sign supporting the workers in the window and one late one afternoon someone launched a fist sized rock through the window. I think they must have used a potato launcher because it went through the window and then hit the back wall 40 feet from the window. And there was a customer in here and a staff person in here and we then put posters very less tasteful posters all over the windows in support of the workers rights in that era. And I have to say Mike this the customer that was in here came in the next morning with his daughter who is usually with him and she. We can spin this that this is the smoke damage from coming in here. She had a little jar with a fundraising sign and I said I can't do that. They talked me into it and I made the money for the window in the day was a thousand dollars. And so after a few months we replaced the window. This has been a wonderful community to be a part of. I can I'll just say that. So there's always it could have been so much worse. I'm not I mean a lot of people have it a lot worse. I'm not belly aching about it. We'll get through. Reporting for WORT News I'm Christine Driscoll.
Interview with Patrick Downey, proprietor of The Victory coffee shop in Madison, WI, a week after a fire shut it down.
Image courtesy Christine Driscoll / WORT News