Overnight Fire Destroys Lumber Yard in Lower Township
By DAN GOOD, Staff Writer, 609-272-7218 | Posted: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:10 am | 0 comments
LOWER TOWNSHIP - Fire destroyed the Villas Lumber Co.'s lumber yard early Saturday morning, turning plywood, building supplies and family history into a charred, smoldering mess.
The company's owner thinks the fire was intentionally set.
The fire started just after midnight, on the 1500 block of Bayshore Road. It took firefighters hours to put out the blaze, which reached high into the dark sky and melted the siding off a house across the street....Continue Reading
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When owner Nancy Conroy Kuswendra thinks about the orange blaze, she thinks of her parents, Gloria and Robert Conroy Sr., and how they built the two-story building in the 1960s.
"It's pretty gut-wrenching to look at something my parents built from the ground up and to see it gone like that," Kuswendra said. "It's just devastating."
The family is in the process of selling an adjacent hardware store but looked to keep the lumber yard, Kuswendra said. Now, the lumber yard is a memory. The fire turned the Cape May County institution into twisted steel beams and piles of blackened building supplies.
Kuswendra doesn't think the fire was an accident. She says there's been a lot of spray painting and graffiti and vandalism lately.
"I know the fire's still under investigation, but (fire officials) indicated that they thought it was arson, that it was deliberate, and that it
didn't just go up for whatever reason," she said.
Because of all the combustible materials involved, Kuswendra said, officials may never know how the fire started.
She is proud of the quick response by the Villas Volunteer Fire Company. In the past, the firefighters held ladder training in the lumber yard. Saturday morning, for all the wrong reasons, the firefighters were able to put their training to use.
What's next? When asked the question, Kuswendra initially said she did not know, but she gave it some thought and found a new response.
"We'll pick up, clean up and move on," she said.
E-mail Dan Good: DGood@pressofac.com
This story was taken from the news source stated above. It's content and comments are not the opinion of The Elwood Vol. Fire Company or it's members
