The morning after the big fire (updated)

Early on Monday morning smoke was still rising from parts of the buildings that burned on Sunday afternoon and there were still firefighters on the scene. Below is what remains of the former Longs Gift store.

 Here is a look through a Kellner Street window of the Long building

 A bit further down the block was the former office of the Jasper County Economic Development Organization. The director was able to retrieve some files from a file cabinet on Monday. This office did not seem to be as completely burned as most of the rest of the building.

 Here is a peek though what was the window of Dr. Moyer's office.

 Same window, different angle. Not only is the roof completely gone, but most of the interior walls are too.

 Below is a picture of the Kellner Street entrance to the building. Dr. Moyer's office was on the right and the law office of Clifford Robinson was on the left. Down the hallway was B&D Pools and Spa. Before TV Cable sold to NITCO, its office was at the end of the hallway.

 The block of Kellner Street along the building was closed to traffic early on Monday. I suspect that there will be some concern about the structural integrity of the walls and people will be discouraged from getting close to them. First Merchants Bank wanted to open its drive-up and was asking whether the street could allow the traffic from the exit.

I am not sure how up-to-date the sign was.

Express Employment had only recently moved into the corner office. It had been rented by Shelter Insurance until it moved to the Horton Building a couple months ago.

 Below is what is left of the Van Rensselaer entrance to the building. The Cutting Room was located to the right of the entrance and the hearing aid center to the left.

 The same part of the building but from a different angle.

The angry birds mural was on a wall that partially collapsed. I suspect the rest of the murals on this side of the alley will soon be gone as the wall is removed. The alley was still blocked off early Monday.

A Facebook post from Serenity Health and Wellness said that 24 businesses were affected. I would like to see the complete list. I had not walked through the building recently and there was a lot of change from year to year.

The former Longs building was owned by M S Maxwell LLC and had 5,800 square feet of space. The Town Mall was owned by Filson Rentals LLC and had 29,313 square feet of space. Almost certainly there is not that much vacant space in downtown Rensselaer. Finding new space to resume operations may be a serious problem for the businesses that were destroyed in the fire.

(I may update this post later today.)

Update:
By the time I stopped by what had been the Town Mall this afternoon, the walls along Kellner had been knocked down. Kellner was partially open to traffic so that people could use the bank drive up and shop at R&M.

 Below is a closer look at what had been Express Employment.

 The debris had been pushed off the sidewalk where the Van Rensselaer entrance to the Town Mall had been. City utility crews were busy turning off power to the burned buildings and turning it back on for the rest of the downtown. The gas mains to the Town Mall were being closed off.

The little section of the building that housed Rich's Barber Shop and the Amerimac Corporation seemed to be intact.  I was told that the furniture had been removed from the barber shop this morning. There was no furniture to remove from most of the businesses and offices.

 Below is what was the Kellner entrance. Compare it to what the entrance looked like in the morning. (See the sixth photo above.)

Here is another video from the Rensselaer Republican.

Papers in file cabinets did not always burn. I suspect that there was not enough oxygen to support fire and the fire did not get hot enough in the lower parts of the offices to carbonize the paper. I also suspect that nothing on computer drives survived. It is a reminder that it is a good idea to back up important computer data and store it in a different location than your computer. If you do not want to back up to the cloud, a lot of files can be placed on a flash drive and they are cheap.

A state fire marshall was on site this afternoon.

And to add to the bad news, the bakery is closing. See here. A ray of sunshine: Ivy Tech will offer several classes on the St. Joe campus this spring.