By DOUG SPECHT and DAVE DAUPHINEE
of The Free Press
Karen Kerr lost her jeans and almost lost her job when her place of employment disappeared in a tower of flames Thursday afternoon.
Miss Kerr is an IBM machine operator at Central Chevrolet Oldsmobile (London) Ltd.
She said she was working with five other persons in the accounting office, just above the showroom at 128 Fullarton St., when the fire was discovered shortly after 1 p.m.
“We just heard a bang,” she said later.
“Then someone shouted: ‘Everybody get the cars out and get the hell out of here.’ ”
She fled as smoke began pouring into her office.
“We’d been smelling gas all morning but nobody did anything about it,” she said.
Miss Kerr, 19, said she wasn’t hurt but was shaken by the experience – and she was somewhat chagrined when she remembered the pair of blue jeans she’d left behind in the office.
She said another employee, payroll clerk Pat Richards, gathered up pay information, documents and cheques and stuffed them into a metal cabinet before fleeing. Miss Kerr doubted the documents would survive.
They didn’t.
Disheveled and disconsolate, Miss Kerr watched the leaping flames and wondered if she was out of work.
Late Thursday, general manager George Stedelbauer said all employees were to report for work today. They would have things to do.
A mechanic said he first became aware something was wrong just after 1 p.m. when he smelled smoke while playing checkers in the back room.
“I was down there playing checkers, you see, ‘cause it was kind of a slow day and then we smelled the smoke.
“We ran out and then we started to work on the fire ‘cause it was down in the parts room.
“When we saw we couldn’t handle it, we decided to get the hell out of there.”
The mechanic said employees pushed cars out of the building – including a $50,000 Lamborghini – but several were left inside.
“There was one in there with its tires off and some more of the used cars were up on jacks.”
He said most of the mechanics were able to remove their tool sets although some were lost and one employee’s car was among those destroyed.
