The owners of Akita Equipment are still assessing the damage almost a month after a fire at the company’s headquarters on the outskirts of St. John’s.
The blaze broke out just before 11:30 on a Monday morning, October 30th.
It’s believed to have started in the main Akita signage on the front of the building, that backs onto Paddy’s Pond, which was used as a water source to fight the fire.
All 20 or so people in the building at the time escaped through alternate exits and without injury, according to Akita owner Chris Howlett, who himself stayed a little longer than might normally not be advised.
“It was a pretty wild day, I must say. I was inside while it was on fire myself, trying to get some stuff out of there,” he said. “There’s a lot to it, I tell ya. It’s been a stressful couple of weeks for sure. I’m a little bit more over it now this week, I’m not gonna lie.”
Howlett, meanwhile, couldn’t say enough about the efforts of firefighters, who were also dealing with a major blaze in downtown St. John’s that same morning.
“Three trucks showed up — one from Brookfield, one from Mount Pearl and one from Paradise, and they did an awesome job,” he said. “We were lucky because the building was built in different sections and they had firewalls there so we were able to contain it to one area. So very, very lucky and a great response from the St. John’s Regional Fire Department.”
Howlett says work continues with insurance adjusters, adding they may need to replace the entire roof on the building.
Akita Equipment is a family-owned trucking company started in 2007, with a fleet of nearly three dozen rigs moving all over North America. They’ve been at their site on the Trans-Canada Highway since 2018.