Ben Whitnall, left, and Dennis Eden of Dennis Eden Electrical Contractor, work Thursday morning to repair some of the light fixtures at The Bargain! Shop that were damaged in Wednesday’s crash when a car came through the Port Colborne storefront. The front doors which would have been behind Whitnall have been replaced temporarily by boards and insulation. Laura Barton/Welland Tribune/Postmedia Network
Or at least as much in working order as things can be.
By Thursday morning, the registers and displays had all been set back up for business and the floor had been cleared of any debris.
Where the doors once were, however, the wall has been replaced with boards. How long they will stay there isn’t yet known.
“Now, it’s an insurance issue, not just a construction issue, so there are a bunch of other factors that are out of my control,” said Fred Davies, owner of The Bargain! Shop. “I would start fixing it today if I could, but there’s now corporate bureaucracy that kind of takes over the process.”
Davies said there are four insurance companies involved with figuring out how the storefront is going to get fixed — his own, the store’s, the insurer of the owner of a Honda that ended up in the store, as well as the insurer of the driver who started the seven-vehicle collision.
The collision, which involved a driver who has been charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and six counts of failing to stop at the scene of a collision, has made headlines across several news outlets.
Besides general coverage for the fiasco, Davies himself has also been interviewed several times about what happened when his newly finished storefront was crashed through.
“The amount of publicity (the store is) getting out of this is amazing,” he said. “That would be the nice blessing is if (it) actually did see an increase in business because of the awareness.”
“Let’s hope so because this sucks.”
Store manager Rachel Williams said she’s hoping to set up an additional till to accommodate any influx that might come in.
She was one of the people who helped put the store back together. She said while the cleanup was happening, someone found a piece of the car.
“When (the cleanup crew) came, cleaning through the boxes, we found the Honda ornament,” she said.
She calls it a miracle that no one was seriously injured in the incident.
The store will remain open, although patched up while the insurance companies sort out the details.
Contractor Bill Day, who works with Merit Contractors, said once the rebuild starts, it will take six to eight weeks to get it back to where it was. The doors will need to be rebuilt, as will a small wall at the entrance and glass around the doors will need to be readded.
Davies commended the Port Colborne Fire and Emergency Services, saying its personnel went above and beyond to make sure the store was secure and everyone was safe.
Source: Welland Tribune