Dryer fire causes $1.3 million loss
A drycleaning plant in Columbia, SC,
recently suffered more than $1.3 million in damages following a
fire that began in a clothes dryer.
Lexington Dry Cleaning, owned and
operated by Tom Garrett, lost everything as a result of the
blaze — its 7,000 sq. ft. facility, the cleaning
equipment and all of its customers’ garments.
The company has 15 drop stores and runs
five delivery routes, but all of the clothing was cleaned and
worked on at the Columbia Avenue location that burned down.
Fire and insurance officials have
concluded their evaluation of the site, but so far nobody can
detect how the dryer caused the fire.
According to Garrett, one of his
employees put some wet clothes in athe dryer, started it up,
then heard a “poof’ sound.
“She turned around and the clothes
inside the dryer were on fire,” he noted.
“Ironically, we just had a contractor visit who comes in
every two months and cleans and lubricates our equipment. He
also comes in and blows out and vacuums all of the dust on the
machines, so he had just done that two weeks before it
happened.”
Garrett believes his insurance coverage
will be sufficient, though the process will take time.
“It seems that we are moving along
pretty well,” he noted. “They haven’t started
paying us yet. We’re working on gathering all of that
information and getting everything evaluated, settling the
claims. We’ve got a crew of people in our company who are
working constantly on setting up the claims and issues...
getting affidavits filled out and working on turning these
claims into the insurance company. I’m pleased with our
progress”
Garrett, a cleaner for over 35 years,
originally bought the company in 1988. Though he plans to
rebuild on the same location, he will have to look for another
site to house his processing plant.
“We’re going to relocate the
plant. That site only has half an acre of land and with the
current building code, we would not be able to rebuild a plant
large enough to do all of our work on that site,’ he
said. “So, we’re probably just going to rebuild a
retail site there and lease out a couple of spaces and keep a
dry store for ourselves at the old location.”
In the meantime, Garrett is making due by
leasing another cleaner’s plant during a nightly
graveyard shift. Neil Freeman, owner of Arnold’s Cleaners
in Columbia, quickly offered his company as a temporary
solution.
In fact, Lexington Dry Cleaning burned
down on a Monday and Garrett and his employees were already
cleaning customers’ clothing two days later at
Arnold’s.”
“We made that arrangement within
two days,” Garrett said. “We start around 5
o’clock each afternoon and maybe finish between 1 and 2
a.m.”
“It’s interrupted our service
a little bit,” he added. “We don’t give same
day service now. But, we’re giving next day
service.”
Though many customers lost garments to
the fire, most are sticking by Lexington in their time of
crisis. Garrett estimates that business has only dropped about
ten percent, which is amazing considering the facility that
burned down also doubled as a retail store.
“We seem to be quite busy,”
he said. “We lost some of the sales of that particular
plant but we have another store in the area. We’re just
directing people to that area and we’ve called a lot of
them and offered home delivery. We’re still doing fairly
well. It was not like the clock just stopped.”
Despite the tragedy, Garrett has managed
to keep a positive attitude. He prefers to focus on the good
things.
“We’re pretty fortunate.
Nobody was hurt. We were really relieved by that,” he
said. “Now, I think we’re making progress.
We’re working with the engineers and builders. I’ve
had an awful lot of help to guide us along.”
Garrett has secured his leasing
arrangement with Arnold’s Cleaners for a few more months
and is quite confident that Lexington Dry Cleaning will be
back.
As a former U.S. Marine and an alumni of
Clemson University (where he studied mechanical engineering),
Garrett believes his past training is helping him take the
inciedent in stride.
“I’m 70 years old, but I
don’t give up very easily,” he explained.
 |