It has been more than two months since fire ripped through a Richmond vitamin store.
But there’s still no end in sight to the clean-up for 12 Baskets or for two of its Blundell Centre neighbours.
The store has been closed since the blaze and, according to photos taken by a shopping centre customer, the premises doesn’t even look as if it has been touched.
Also closed for more than two months due to smoke damage are Blundell Dental Clinic and Return It recycling.
A message on Blundell Dental’s phone number states that much of its equipment will need to be deep-cleaned or even replaced, adding that it had hoped to re-open after Easter.
Liquor store open but rain leaking in
12 Baskets’ other neighbour, Liquor Town, is open but has massive gaps in its ceiling, where the recent rainfall has been penetrating.
Richmond Fire-Rescue has completed its investigation and concluded the fire was “electrical” in origin and that the premises has been “turned over to the owner’s insurance representatives and the restoration company.”
The vitamin store’s owner, Christina Liu, told the Richmond News this week that the store “was being held under investigation with the landlord’s insurance company.”
However, she said she only found out recently that the unit had been “released” so she wasn’t able to “do anything with the space up until then.”
12 Baskets owner unsure of what will happen next
Liu said she met last week with the centre’s property manager and hopes to make some progress in the coming weeks, although conceding that she doesn’t really know “what's going to happen just yet.”
The News has reached out to Blundell Centre for comment.
Liu told the News just after the fire in February that her business could be hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket and closed for up to a year.
The fire, said Liu at the time, ravaged her storage area at the back of the store and melted most of the front, retail side, destroying in the process what she believed to be hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock.
And given the nature of her business, she said she only had basic insurance coverage.
“We’re not at high-risk so our coverage is minimal. It’s not in the nature of our business to have high coverage,” said Liu at the time.
