Salvation Army hopes to open doors soon after Modesto thrift store fire
Some 21,000 to 28,000 items of clothing — from pants and shorts to dresses and shirts — cycle through The Salvation Army Family Thrift Store and Donation Center in north Modesto about every 10 days.
That is part of what helps the store raise about $100,000 each month to support the army’s Stockton Adult Rehabilitation Center, a 106-bed residential drug addiction program for men from across Northern California.
That support came to an abrupt stop Thursday afternoon after a fire started in the donation center’s warehouse.
The blaze was contained to the metal warehouse. A firewall separates the warehouse and the attached store. While all the donated goods in the warehouse were destroyed, the store and its donated items sustained water and smoke damage. The store and warehouse are about 35,000 square feet, according to a previous Bee story.
The store was open at the time of the fire, with salespeople in the front and a couple of staff in the warehouse. But no one was hurt.
Modesto Deputy Fire Chief Darin Jesberg said Friday that the cause of the fire remains under investigation. He said a damage estimate and whether the warehouse can be repaired were not yet available.
Trailer for donations
Salvation Army Maj. Sylvan Young said Friday the army hopes to reopen the thrift store in three to four weeks. And as of Friday afternoon it had set up a trailer in the thrift store parking lot for donations. They can be made 10 am. to 6 p.m. every day.
Young is the business administrator for the Stockton Adult Rehabilitation Center. He said the Modesto thrift store — which is at McHenry and Bangs avenues and nestled among car dealerships — brings in about $1.2 million annually toward the rehabilitation center’s roughly $5 million annual budget.
He said people can drop off at the trailer donations of clothing, books and records, small appliances like coffee pots and toasters, pots and pans and other housewares — everything the donation center had been accepting before the fire except large items, including kitchen tables and couches.
“Once we figure out what we can do, maybe we can take some of the larger items,” Young said. “We want to be back in business as quickly as we can.”
Young said he is grateful the water and smoke damage in the store is not as extensive as he first thought. He said the store needs to be cleaned and its goods need to be assessed to determine what still can be sold.
He said about 21,000 to 28,000 items of clothing cycle through the store about every 10 days. He said about half of it is sold in the store and what does not sell is sold to be recycled into rags.
He said the Modesto store is the biggest and busiest of The Salvation Army’s three thrift stores that support the rehabilitation center. The other stores are in Stockton and Lodi.
“It is a huge asset for The (Salvation Army’s) Stockton Corps,” said Dave Kerr, chairman of The Salvation Army Modesto Corps’ advisory board.
Young said the warehouse was about half full at the time of the fire. He said the donated items are kept in what are called Gaylord boxes — 4-foot-by-4-foot cardboard containers. He said there were 160 of them in the warehouse when the fire started. The boxes were stacked on wooden pallets.
Young said about 11 people work at the thrift store and donation center. He said that is one reason the army placed a trailer for donations in the thrift store parking lot, to provide work for some of the employees. He said others can work at the other thrift stores or use vacation time while the store is closed.
“We don’t want to displace anyone,” Young said about the store and donation center’s staff.
Thrift store opened in 2019
The Salvation Army opened the thrift store and donation center in north Modesto in April 2019. The site at 4418 McHenry Ave. replaced the army’s older, smaller store on Yosemite Boulevard.
The store and warehouse had been the home of Simi Floral Supply Center from 1981 to 2018. The Simi family closed the business in 2018 and then leased the building to The Salvation Army.
(Ron Simi built the store in 1981. Sons Robert and Richard said the warehouse was built about a decade later. It was the last location for a business Ron Simi started in 1963.)
Jesberg, the deputy fire chief, 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.
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.
People can support the Stockton Adult Rehabilitation Center by donating at stocktonarc.salvationarmy.org, and donations to The Salvation Army’s programs in Modesto can be made at modestocorps.salvationarmy.org/modesto_corps.
This story was originally published June 4, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
