‘I really had my mouth wide open in shock.’ Fire harms downtown Lexington businesses
A couple of Lexington businesses are left to figure out how to go forward after a large structure fire badly damaged a multi-story office building at the corner of West Second and North Upper streets Thursday morning.
The Lexington Writer’s Room and Megan’s Salon are two of the businesses that occupy space in the building. Both got the chance to take in the damage firsthand Thursday morning.
“I was in disbelief, like I really had my mouth wide open in shock,” said Megan Kirby, the owner of Megan’s Salon.
Gwenda Bond, a Lexington Writer’s Room board member and co-founder of the nonprofit organization, shared some photos of the damage inside their space on Twitter. She too described the remains of her space as shocking.
“It’s traumatic to see a space that you worked on, even just to get a glimpse inside and see kind of the remnants of char in there,” Bond said.
The Lexington Writer’s Room, which has 54 members, moved into the 200-year-plus old building roughly a year ago. Bond said the group has thrived in the space since moving in after dealing with the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“This really is our dream space,” Bond said. “It’s an old building, over 200 years old. We’ve really put a lot of art and kind of funky furniture and books and local woodwork and tables and desks, just try to make this like a really unique space for the Lexington writing community.”
Kirby, who has occupied the building since July 2019, said she can temporarily move to other locations thanks to good relationships with others in the business. However, she said her supplies, which includes chairs, shampoo bowls, products and scissors, were inside the building at the time of the fire.
Kirby said her scissors in particular were very expensive, worth between $1,200 and $2,400.
“You just don’t borrow other people’s scissors,” Kirby said.
Maj. Jessica Bowman from the Lexington Fire Department said it’s too early for investigators to come to know how the fire started. She said the basement is full of several feet of water, which is making it difficult to process the scene.
The fire was reported around 3:24 a.m., according to the Lexington Fire Department. Strong winds made it more difficult to contain the fire and the firefighters had to back out of the building multiple times before knocking the fire down.
Firefighters worked for hours to put the fire out. No injuries were reported other than a couple of bumps and bruises to some firefighters, Battalion Chief Chris Ward said. Despite the amount of damage the building and their businesses suffered, both Kirby and Bond are glad that no one got hurt.
“Stuff can always be fixed and recovered, people not so much,” Bond said.
“It’s hard to feel bad when we’ve seen what the people in western Kentucky went through,” Bond said. “You know when you’ve actually seen, like recently, the worst case scenario, you’ve got to keep things in perspective.”
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 12:41 PM.
