Firefighters continue mop up at Salvation Army thrift store blaze in Modesto
Firefighters continued their mop-up work Friday morning of the Thursday afternoon fire at The Salvation Army Family Thrift Store and Donation Center on north McHenry Avenue in Modesto.
The fire started in and was contained to the metal warehouse. A firewall separated the warehouse from the thrift store in front of the 35,000-square-foot building, according to Robert and Richard Simi.
Their father, Ron, built the site in 1981 as the then new home of Simi Floral Supply Center. The Simi family closed the business in 2018 and then leased the building in 2019 to The Salvation Army.
The brothers said the thrift store sustained water and smoke damage. Salvation Army Maj. Sylvan Young said Thursday all the donations in the warehouse were destroyed. That includes clothing, furniture and other household items.
No one was injured in the fire.
Modesto Deputy Fire Chief Darin Jesberg said the cause of the fire remains under investigation. He said a damage estimate and whether the warehouse can be repaired were not yet available.
Robert Simi said other than the fire starting in the warehouse his family does not know much else. The brothers said officials told them it could take a couple of weeks to determine the fire’s cause. The brothers said they are focused on getting the thrift store reopened.
The store is filled with aisles of clothing hanging on racks, shelves filled with books and shoes and other household items. Water was puddled in spots on the concrete floor. The store was open at the time of the fire, with salespeople in the front and a couple of staff in the warehouse.
The Simi brothers said they are grateful no one was hurt.
Jesberg said roughly 80 firefighters from several agencies responded to the fire, including ones from Manteca, Tracy, Lathrop, Escalon and Ripon. The resources included 23 fire engines and three ladder trucks.
Modesto Battalion Chief Ryan Winton said he expects a fire engine and crew will remain at the thrift store, which is at McHenry and Bangs avenue, throughout Friday to ensure no piles of debris burn as the day heats up.
“We’re going to have a presence throughout the day until we are in a position where we can it turn it back over to the owner,” Winton said.
Winton said the blaze was challenging because firefighters were dealing with a metal warehouse packed with wooden pallets, cardboard, clothing, furniture and other household items that readily burn.
Winton said firefighters could not cut holes in the metal roof to help vent the fire. But he said firefighters gained access to the blaze through the warehouse’s doors and by removing some of the warehouse siding with circular saws.
Jesberg said it did help that the warehouse’s plastic skylights melted, allowing some of the fire’s hot gases and smoke to escape.
The Fire Department’s hazmat team also was on scene to check the runoff water, which is a standard procedure in structure fires that require lots of water.
The Salvation Army’s Emergency Disaster Services fed the firefighters Thursday evening, providing them with 22 pizzas, six cases each of water and Gatorade as well as chips, cookies and peanuts, according to a Salvation Army Modesto Facebook post.
Ron Simi started his business in 1963 and operated it at several locations. The north McHenry Avenue store was the last one. The store was built in 1981, and the brothers said the warehouse was built about a decade later.
The Salvation Army opened its thrift store in April 2019. The site replaced the army’s older, smaller store on Yosemite Boulevard.
A Salvation Army official did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday morning regarding the army’s next steps.
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 1:35 PM.
