Brooklyn is on Fire, Literally this time

In the past I have referred to the Brooklyn New York iFLOOR store as being “on fire” with their high energy, huge service commitment and excellence in sales.

On Sunday I got a call that was on a crappy cell phone connection and it almost sounded like the caller said our Brooklyn store was on fire. Turns out that’s exactly what he said.

I checked in with the folks who actually know what is going on and sure enough there was a major storm that rolled through New York and apparently lightening stuck our rooftop and began a fire.

Here is the story directly from Tim the Brooklyn iFLOOR Manager:

Story goes this way – we had a few customers in the store, the rain had just started coming down in Brooklyn and there was a loud boom (gunshot -ish) in the store. A few customers including me, kinda ducked for cover, after then we began to smoke and I looked around the store, warehouse, and the back and noticed nothing, a customer said it sounded like a transformer had blown, it had happened to her last week where she lives. Terrence said to me after the customers were gone, he was smelling smoke, I looked outside didn’t see anything and came back in. We were on the phone with Madison and Terrence got the burning smell again but stronger, I also got it then and I went back to look throughout the store, went back outside walked across the street and noticed smoke coming from the roof, came back told Terrence and warned the neighbor and got ourselves outside to safety. Terrence called 911, I called Rich and when the firemen came (very quickly I may add) they saw how serious it was.

We’re so happy that everyone is safe! Great quick thinking by the team to check and re-check and then get out. Although the damage will take a little time to repair we already have a team trying to make sure that our customers do not feel any ill effects since most of the inventory in the store was completely water soaked and smoke damaged. The store will be back online shortly!

Special thanks to the incredibly fast response from the good men of the FDNY! They were on the job quick and no question saved the building.

Here are some pictures that reflect the serious nature of the problem:

Here is a video to let you fully appreciate how much water was incoming! Great job on the photos Tim & the gang.