Fireworks in the Hole
Dazzling blaze destroys variety store
2006 --A devastated Roy Hitt said he plans to rebuild his business on the same
spot.
The remains of Parkway Variety on Alabama 24 continued
smoldering Thursday, a day after the store caught fire.
Pat Patterson didn't want to believe her eyes when she
arrived at the store Wednesday night, so she went home to sleep it off, hoping things
would be different in the morning.
Not much had changed by the time she returned about eight
hours later. Thick, black smoke still billowed from the metal building just inside the
Lawrence County line, and fire still burned throughout much of the building.
"I just thought it was a dream," Patterson, an
employee since May, said Thursday morning.
Firefighters said the blaze began at about 10 p.m. in the
back of the building, possibly in one of the storage trailers.
"We haven't determined the cause of the fire,"
Darwin Clark, a captain with Caddo-Midway Fire and Rescue, said Thursday. "We don't
think it is suspicious."
He said Caddo officials had not contacted the state fire
marshal's office because the building was still burning, preventing the collecting of
samples.
None of the plaza's other businesses were damaged, and none
of the 50 firefighters at the scene were injured. Firefighters from Chalybeate, Moulton,
Courtland, Trinity and Decatur also battled the blaze.
Clark said the building was full of plastics and fireworks.
Employees moved out most of the fireworks about two months
ago because they were out of season, Patterson said.
"If all our fireworks were in there, oh honey!"
she said.
As it was, the fire already looked and sounded like a gun
battle.
Pops and hisses steadily sounded from the building,
fireworks bursting and ricocheting within.
As firefighters pumped water into the inferno, fireworks
whistled out, pelting them in showers of multicolored sparks.
"It felt like a war zone," said Trinity Fire Capt.
Steve Caudle. "There were all kinds of Roman candles coming out of there. I just
ducked my head down."
On the highway, passersby watched fireworks rocket into the
sky in a pyrotechnic display worthy of a Fourth of July celebration.
But the black smoke blanketing the road and the engines
rolling in, bringing desperately needed water and manpower, made clear it was no
celebration.
Caudle said the fire is one of the largest he's seen in 20
years as a fireman.
He stepped back from the heat of the front line when the
first engines' water tanks ran out.
Holding the limp hose and calling for more water, Caudle
watched the flames rolling from the loading bay door at the back of the building.
"Blue flames! Buddy, that's hot," he said.
The sides of the building began to glow and warp. Flames
leapt from the melting seams.
More trailers behind the store were hitched to tractors and
moved before the fire, which consumed the entire store and two trailers, could spread to
them.
Firefighters ran a hose to a hydrant farther down the road
to keep pumping.
As soon as holes opened in the roof, a Decatur ladder truck
attacked the flames from above.
"We sprayed water on it for about five hours until we
determined that we couldn't put it out," Clark said "We didn't just let it burn.
We simply weren't able to put it out."
As its name implies, the store carried a variety of items,
everything from tanning beds to flowers to tools and lotions.
Patterson said it also carried a lot of memories.
"I have been doing business here for years and
years," she said of the store that has been there since 1987.
When someone in her family died, Patterson always purchased
the floral arrangements from Parkway Variety. She was unemployed in May when she noticed a
sign on the door advertising for an employee.
"I filled it out, and Lucas (Hitt, son of the owner)
interviewed me," she said. "I came back the next day and made a floral
arrangement. I have been here ever since. This was my second home. All of the employees
were like family. It's very seldom that you find a place of employment that you
love."
Roy Hitt is the head of the family.
"You couldn't ask for a better boss or a more caring
person," Patterson said.
Hitt said he did not have a dollar amount for how much he
lost, but it was his entire inventory.
"I'm concerned about my employees and their livelihood
and mine too," he said Thursday. "I wish it had never happened."
"We're going to trust in the good Lord that he'll take
care," said employee Patricia Cooper.
1996 -- A fireworks store bustling with Fourth of July shoppers burst into flames
Wednesday, killing at least eight people, including three children, as they rushed for the
front door. Twelve other people were injured.