ESSEX JUNCTION, Vt. -
A fire at Wendy's in Essex Junction this morning puts the fast food restaurant out of business for at least another day and possibly even longer. We spoke with the manager who says the clean-up and ordering in new food will take a little bit of time. But in the midsts of the fire the store was able to help out those less fortunate.
Light smoke blows out of Wendy's in Essex Junction Wednesday morning.
"She said, there's black smoke and I told her immediately get out of the store, just get out, everybody needs to get out immediately," said Jessica Nieland, the store manager.
She says it started in the heating unit on the roof, "The motor somehow either shorted out or caught on fire that's where the flames came from."
"I got here, smoke was coming through the roof, a few minutes later flames were coming through the roof," said Lt. Keith Rivers, with the Essex Junction Fire Department. He called for back-up and after two and half hours, the fire was out. But so was business on a week expected to be busy.
"Across the street right now, we have the Vermont farm show and we were looking forward to that, we were highly stocked on product," said Nieland.
Even though the restaurant lost business it didn't want all the food to be lost as well, so they donated all they had in storage to a local food shelf.
"Lettuce tomatoes, meat, bacon, all kinds of cheese, so we donated a lot over there just you know help them out, since we can't use it, let's give it to someone who can," said Nieland.
And just when they thought the fire was over, smoke started coming out of the restaurant again.
"We found where the hotspots were, put water on them and cooled them down," said Lt. Rivers.
This is the second time that fire crews have been called out here, and caution tape is still up and they say with all the damage inside, it's probably going to be here a few more days.
"We are looking to open as quickly as possible but unfortunately it's not going to be today or tomorrow," said Nieland.
