Damage reaches nearby businesses

Residents of apartments forced to live in motel

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

By CHRIS ETHERIDGE

The Register-Mail

GALESBURG - Tears formed on Steve Seibert's stress-worn face when he realized his mother's painting was probably buried somewhere under the rubble.

She finished the painting before she was killed in a car accident in 1979. The art was not a masterpiece, he said, but it was a token by which he remembered her.

The owner of The Frame Works, 68 N. Prairie St., kept her painting in his office in the back corner of the store, but a portion of the east wall of the former Gross Galesburg building crashed through the ceiling and fell into his office when the warehouse collapsed Monday, leaving a 10-foot hole in the roof and covering his office in plaster and bricks.

Seibert spent nearly 12 hours Monday removing merchandise and displays from his shop. Business owners and residents were forced to evacuate the buildings along the first block of North Prairie Street in the wake of the fire that destroyed two downtown buildings and damaged several others.

Seibert watched through most of the early morning as firefighters poured water on the area around his building and on his roof to prevent the fire from spreading into his shop.

The building housing The Frame Works, It's Scrap'n Time, 60 N. Prairie St., and six apartments above the two shops still stands, but may yet be demolished. Several of the apartments were destroyed when the warehouse walls fell.

Waking up to sirens

Heather Sundquist, a three-year tenant of the building, was sitting at her computer around 2 a.m. Monday when she heard voices outside. She saw several police cars blocking the street and went downstairs where she saw the fire bursting from the building behind her apartment. She went back inside to wake her boyfriend, Chris Graham, and the other five tenants in the building, leaving most of her possessions.

After being allowed to go back into the building later Monday morning, Sundquist and Graham removed everything they could from their home, leaving some large furniture. They are now staying in a hotel room provided by the Western Illinois Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Saving what they could

Firefighters called It's Scrap'n Time co-owner Tracy Ingram around 2:30 a.m. She quickly drove downtown but was stopped by a train on the tracks just two blocks north of the fire, where she sat for five minutes watching the fire ravage the warehouse next to her business.

She got to the store and removed business files and computer equipment first, then tried to empty the store of any valuable merchandise.

Some 12 hours later, the smoke detector beeped constantly in the next room as a reminder of the disaster in back of the building while Tracy and her husband Steve tried to finish emptying the store.

"I don't know what goes anymore," Tracy said, as she packed a few remaining items into a box and carried it to a rental truck in front of the store.

Steve worked to clear a bulky wooden desk that was once his father's so he could move it into the truck.

"I don't know how we got it in here," he said.

They sorted through cords and papers in a file cabinet and debated whether to keep a fax machine that probably was too wet to work anymore.

The water came in through a leak in the roof and dripped onto a chair, forming icicles on its back.

Where to go next

Most of their store's merchandise will sit in the Ingrams' dining room until they can find a better place for it.

Neither Seibert nor the Ingrams will know the extent of the damage until they can get into the back rooms again.

During the four-hour fight with the fire, The Frame Works' blue carpet collected puddles of muddy water, and a stench of smoke permeated the walls and merchandise of both stores.

Throughout the morning Monday, Seibert and about 20 other people moved artwork and framing supplies out of the shop until all that was left in the display room was a bench and some sample frames hanging on the wall.

Seibert finished moving some boxes of valuable glass from the back room to the front and watched through a small window of his shop around 2:30 p.m. Monday as a demolition crane was erected around the corner.

"This business has been a blessing," he said. "Honestly, I'm trying to look beyond the next hour and a half.

"There's no way to grasp this whole situation."

But he does hope to keep some perspective on the issue.

"I've been through a lot worse in my life," he said. "These are just material things."

Seibert says he views the business as a living entity, but now he is left wondering if his shop has taken its last breath.