It’s strange to walk into the usually bright and bustling Family Foods store in Clarkfield since an electrical fire quieted and stilled its now darkened placid aisles.
With the store now closed, owner Corey Field and only a couple of employees are on hand at the store.
It has been closed and relatively quiet since almost 6:00 p.m. the evening of October 27 and has been dark since brownouts rolled through the city of Clarkfield starting around 5:00 p.m. that day.
Once power was restored, heat began to build in the breaker box of Family Foods, frying the wiring throughout the building and causing smoke to rise and settle among boxed-goods and produce.
Clarkfield firefighters responded quickly, having already been called on duty to assist Valhalla Apartment residents to the ground floor following the outage.
Firemen Ryan Marthaler and Todd Tennis entered the building and descended the stairs into the basement which had begun to fill with smoke.
“The Fire Department’s response time was amazing, if they hadn’t gotten here when they did it would have been a lot worse,” said Family Foods store owner Corey Field. “And firefighters Ryan Marthaler and Todd Tennis were great. They just calmly walked into a place that I was desperately trying to get out of.”
Firemen Marthaler and Tennis doused the scalding hot fuse box with white foam fire retardant, and used a long handled tool to shut down the power coming to the breaker box, but most of the damage had already been done.
Family Foods is still without power and restoring power is dependent on electrical inspections being done early this week. All of Family Foods refrigerated items may be deemed as unsaleable by state health inspectors late last week and the store must await test results to reveal what might be salvaged from frozen foods which sat in thawing freezers for some time following the power outage and boxed items which sustained varying amounts of smoke damage to outer packaging.
A health inspection ruling on what is deemed as waste and how to dispose of it is expected Wednesday afternoon.
“Sun Bright, an industrial clean-up company, will be coming in to clean the store this week,” said Field. “We’ll need to cleanup, replace some ceiling tiles, fix the buildings electrical wiring and we’ll need to renovate our freezers—considering their compressors may have been damaged in the electrical surge—before we consider reopening.”
Currently, but without certainty, Field hopes to reopen Family Foods sometime near the Thanksgiving holiday. But, as of now that remains uncertain.
Business is at a complete standstill, with Family Foods even unable to deliver groceries pending rulings from recent and future health inspections.
Standing inside the darkened aisles of Family Foods, Corey Field hovers over a solitary light set in the store drawing power from an unknown outside source.
“People are creatures of habit,” laments Corey as he worries how this setback might affect his business. “We’ll need the community’s support when we come back.”
