A massive fire burnt down a Blair County business, leaving only smoldering remains. Not even two weeks later, Fine-Line Cabinets, Inc. is back up and running.
“I knew my husband would come up with something,” said co-owner Wendy Irvin.
“We wouldn’t be remotely where we are without him,” Vice President of Operations Scott Wetter said.
“My first thought was making sure everybody was okay, everybody was out of the building,” owner Dough Irvin recalled. “Once I knew that, then my next thought was, ‘What are we gonna do?'”
A machine in the highly flammable laminating room sparked the fire April 25th.
“One of our guys was cleaning it, turned around away from the machine, turned back and there was a flame coming up the wall,” Irvin said.
The employee tried to extinguish it, but the fire had already spread.
“It was crazy,” Wetter said. “I’ve been with the company 15 years this August so they’re family. That was hard to see that.”
“When you think you’re stepping outside because there might be a little bit of fire, you don’t think you’re never going back in,” Wendy Irvin said. “I was devastated for the employees and for the whole situation, and obviously for him.”
Her husband, Doug, started making calls while the fire was burning. Now, Fine-Line has a new, temporary home in the Ventura Construction building in Juniata.
“We’ve had to certainly do some work behind the scenes to get things up and moving,” Wetter explained, “but as soon as last Thursday, we had guys building some tables and getting things prepared to get back into production.”
“It’s very humbling all the support that we’ve had from the community, from our friends, family, employees, suppliers,” Irvin said. “It’s been very humbling.”
They managed to keep all their employees on payroll without missing a paycheck.
“For as tough a situation as it is, it could have been worse,” Wetter said.
“If you’re gonna have a tragedy, we’ve bounced back about as the best we possibly could as quick as we possibly could,” Irvin said.
They’re looking to rebuild in a year. For now, they’re focused on filling orders.
