ATLANTA — A firefighter suffered a minor injury while battling a fire at a midtown shopping center Monday afternoon.
The owner of the Ansley Mall II shopping plaza had boarded up all the stores in the small strip mall along Monroe Drive after a fire started inside a dry-cleaner business.
"I've got about eight people out of work now, so we need to get back up and running as soon as possible," barbershop owner Greg Martin told Channel 2's Tyisha Fernandes.
Firefighters say they believe the fire started when a dryer got too hot inside Best Cleaners and spread to the neighboring businesses.
Martin said all eight of his employees barely escaped the flames.
“They literally had to run out the door,” Martin told Fernandes.
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Now, those workers have no place to service their customers, which means they don’t earn a paycheck on this Thanksgiving week, just about a month away from all of the other holidays.
“It’s pretty devastating. I mean … we just opened in May. The timing couldn’t have been any worse,” Martin said.
Several workers at the nail salon beside the dry cleaner are also out of a job for now.
Employee Jenny Lee sent Fernandes video of the fire from her cellphone. She said everything inside the dry-cleaning business was flammable.
“All the clothes and the plastic wrap. That’s how the fire burned so fast, you know?” Lee said.
Kia Campbell was working at the Goodwill donation center nearby. She said the fire caused a huge panic for everyone in the vicinity.
“We heard a big boom. It felt like it shook the ground,” Campbell said.
Fire investigators are still trying to determine the official cause of the fire.
Cox Media Group
