Carson Knight has had a bad year.
His wife has been diagnosed with cancer. Family members have died. He survived a car accident. His trailer caught fire.
On Thursday morning, looking at the burned remnants of his Industrial Boulevard auto shop, he managed to find a bright spot.
“The best thing: No one got hurt,” he said.
Early Thursday morning, Capital City Fire/Rescue firefighters responded to a blaze at 2525 Industrial Boulevard, a white rectangular building next to the Sandbar & Grill.
The call for help came about 11:41 p.m. Wednesday. “Upon arrival, fire personnel found a large amount of smoke and flames coming from an automotive repair shop,” CCFR’s official statement said.
“Being an auto shop, it had everything that you could find,” said Fire Marshal Dan Jager, including paint, oil, fuel and batteries.
Between 20 and 25 firefighters worked for about four hours in 25-degree weather to extinguish the fire, Jager said.
It still isn’t clear what started the fire, and Jager said the investigation is continuing.
It’s the most significant commercial fire in Juneau since April 2015, when the boatyard near Juneau-Douglas High School caught fire. That fire started when a halogen light was knocked over and set a fiberglass skiff afire. The fire spread to shop buildings and other vessels in the yard.
[Late-night fireburns the heart out of Harri Commercial Marine on Egan Drive]
According to statistics provided by Jager, there have been 72 fires of all types (residental, commercial, vehicle, etc.) so far this year. In all of 2015, there were 65.
“We are slightly up this year,” Jager said.
The building damaged in Thursday’s fire is owned by George Jefferson and the Niemi family, owners of the Sandbar. According to the City and Borough of Juneau Assessor’s Office, the building housing the Sandbar and the building housing the garage are worth $743,900. The Sandbar was unharmed in the fire.
Before the fire, the garage was home to three auto repair businesses. One, called NorthernLights Auto Sales, was owned by Knight; a second business, owned by William Lockhart, shared Knight’s space. A third man’s business occupied a separate space at the back of the shop.
That separate space appears to have been the source of the fire, Jager said.
According to state records, the space was occupied by Heavy’s General Repair, whose business license expired in 1994. A sign for Heavy’s still hung on the building Thursday, but it wasn’t clear if the occupant was officially working under a different name.
On Thursday morning, the sodden and blackened ceiling of that space had collapsed, burying a classic Corvette.
Two men were in the building when it caught fire, Jager said: One where the fire started and another in the space shared by Knight and Lockhart.
None of the three businesses were insured, but the building itself was insured by its owners.
Knight, who has lived in Juneau for about four years, gradually built his business through his own bootstraps. Lockhart did the same; the two men were sharing a space to help each other.
“This is all out of pocket, which is why it hurts so bad,” Lockhart said while standing in the blackened space.
While the fire appears to have started in their neighbor’s space, inches of water flooded their garage. Soot covered every surface, painting it black. Windows were warped and discolored by heat that also twisted metal. A customer’s car, in for an engine rebuild, was covered in debris.
By mid-morning, Lockhart and Knight had been joined by friends who helped them wield squeegees and dump debris into a borrowed truck.
“The only thing we can do is suck it up and move on,” Knight said.
Automotive business owner William Lockhart pushes water out of a shop located behind the Sandbar on Industrial Boulevard on Thursday after a fire in an adjacent business late Wednesday night.
Fire damage inside Heavy’s Auto Marine Diesel on Thursday located behind the Sandbar on Industrial Boulevard, after a fire Wednesday night gutted a number of automotive businesses in the building.
