Photo courtesy of Wallace's Garden Center
Wallace’s Garden Center, located in Bettendorf, Iowa, suffered a fire in its production area May 31.
The Bettendorf Fire Department brought the fire under control in about an hour, and no injuries occurred. The cause remains undetermined.
“My greenhouse manager’s desk is back there, so two of the greenhouse employees went back in that room, … and then one of my other employees that was outside in the nursery saw smoke and called it out on the radios,” says owner Kate Terrell. “The (greenhouse employees) checked out the back of the greenhouse and saw flames, called 911 and started getting everybody out and ran.”
About five other fire departments from surrounding areas were also called to help, Terrell says. A total of around 30 firefighters helped at the scene, and she says employees helped evacuate hundreds of customers without panic.
“Everybody saw it right away and acted really quickly,” she says. “Luckily, we’re a really big place with lots of exits, so we were able to just really funnel people out of here.”
Terrell says she had a contractor come in as soon as possible to put up an 8-foot plywood wall to block off the fire scene.
The garden center was closed from the time of the fire until June 3. It opened partially June 4 and fully reopened June 5. As far as retail goes, Terrell says customers can’t tell there was ever a fire.
Behind the wall, though, significant damage was done.
“We lost a lot of our equipment, our sprayer, our soil mixer, our pot filling machine, some pallets of soil, all of our fertilizer,” Terrell says. “So, from a production standpoint, it’s been a challenge to get up and going again, but we’re potting mums today, so we’re just having to adapt and overcome, which is one of our taglines around here.”
A demo team came Monday with an excavator and dump trucks to tear the damaged area down and haul the debris away, Terrell says. Already, there are preliminary plans drawn for a new greenhouse that will be close to 11,000 square feet.
Terrell says the store was nearly full at the time of the fire, and some customers didn’t want to leave.
“They wanted to pay for the items and take their plants home,” she says. “It was a Saturday afternoon — it was a beautiful day, like 78 degrees and sunny — and the day after, we probably put away 25 to 30 shopping carts that had been abandoned throughout the store as we made people evacuate. And then the next few days, people were emailing us going, ‘Is my cart still there?’”
The community support has been amazing, Terrell says. While the business was closed and then reopening, people dropped off doughnuts, Gatorade and lunch for the workers.
“Right now, the biggest thing people can do is just come in, shop with us, buy plants and just continue to be customers as they were before,” she says. “We’ll take care of the rest.”