Along the north perimeter are a few trailers the company still sells, but it won’t be like it was, not after the Sept. 5 fire that destroyed the main building, and almost all that was inside.
“We had 100 antique motorcycles in there,” said Bataille, the son of Tom Bataille, who co-owns the business with his brother, Tony. “And we had eight collector cars.”
What they did not have was insurance on any of it, or a sense that the Phillipsburg Fire Department did all it could to avert the devastating loss, although there is a wide difference of opinion on that.
“We always dealt in cash, but one of our suppliers asked us to take out a big line of credit, and with the economy, we let our insurance lapse,” Kirk Bataille said. “We had no overhead, no liabilities. In all, we lost about $1.7 million. We even lost all our tools.”
His view of how the fire department responded and the view of the department differ.
When one of the brothers burned some trash in a large metal barrel behind the building on another dry, windy day, the fire leaped the barrel, set fire to dry grass underneath, took on a wooden fence and quickly enveloped the mostly cement block building.
It is Kirk Bataille’s contention the fire department first sent the wrong equipment, then could not get the right equipment to operate properly upon arrival.
The fire station is about three blocks away.
“The fire marshal still hasn’t issued his report,” Phillipsburg fire Chief David Evans said. “But our first call came from a passer-by who said he saw smoke. We sent a truck over to see what it was.”
Evans said the first firetruck arrived in eight minutes after called, and it did work, but not enough, especially after one of the shop’s employees opened a door trying to salvage some personal papers. The open door invited a wind tunnel, pulling the fire through faster.
The company still is trying to sell trailers through a cell phone-hookup while cleaning up the lot.
“We’ve moved 20 tons by hand so far,” Kirk Bataille said while his uncle worked the phone. “We’re trying to get it cleaned up so people won’t have to look at it.”
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