STATESVILLE, N.C. — City officials in Statesville put up temporary fences around the area of a massive fire that destroyed buildings in downtown early Tuesday morning.
There is temporary fencing from the Merrill Lynch building on South Center Street to Theater Statesville on West Broad Street, and the alley behind the buildings on Court Street.
“No Trespassing” signs are in place.
Pedestrians should use sidewalks on the opposite side of the street as a detour around the fenced-in areas.
New Traffic Pattern: Beginning Friday morning, West Broad Street from Center Street to Meeting Street will be temporally shifted to only allow one-way traffic in the westbound direction toward Mitchell Community College.
A sign of hope
The sign to a theater in downtown Statesville somehow remained mostly untouched after the fire.
That sign is giving the community hope as people pick up the pieces following the devastating blaze.
“My mom first woke me up about 6:20 a.m., when I wake up for school, and she said there’s a huge fire downtown,” said Mikayla Lenahan, an actress Theatre Statesville. “We don’t know what other businesses have been affected.”
Lenahan soon learned that it was the theater where she spends a lot of her time.
Fire crews spent nearly three hours putting out the flames.
“The fire was way more intense than we realized,” said Caity Gordon, the president of Theatre Statesville. “The entire roof and ceiling collapsed on a building.”
Gordon said they moved into the building last year.
“The space was new to us,” Gordon said. “We’ve only been there for a year it was going to be a stepping stone for us.”
“That was like my home away from home,” Lenahan said. “I mean, I could truly just let it all loose in there and sing and act and dance. It was my safe space.”
The community is already helping out.
“The community has really rallied behind us,” Gordon said. “We’ve gotten so much support from local business owners.”
“I know that we’re going to get a lot of donations from the GoFundMe,” Lenahan said. “I know that a lot of people are going to step up to help.”
It is unclear if anything can be salvaged at the theater.
“I didn’t want to believe that it was all gone,” Lenahan said. “I still believe that there’s some stuff in there.”
The “Theatre Statesville” plastic sign that survived the fire is pointing them in the right direction.
“I think it’s a sign that it’s going to all be OK,” Lenahan said.
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Theatre Statesville has several performances this weekend.
The show will go as planned at Cornerstone Christian Academy.
The cause of the fire is under investigation
VIDEO: No one hurt after building fire breaks out in downtown Statesville
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