Raleigh Fire

Glenwood South Open, But Some Restaurants Forced To Close In Aftermath Of Raleigh Fire

... as usual. But around the corner on Jones Street, just a block from the fire that forced restaurants to evacuate Thursday night, owners and managers struggled Friday with the decision of whether they could open. Jones and West streets, which give drivers access to the restaurants, were closed most of Friday. And while pedestrians could park and walk around the yellow tape and barricades, owners and managers knew it might keep customers away. Plus, when a crane fell in the midst of the fire, it landed on phone and cable lines that left some places without a working phone. “People don’t know we’re open,” Brian Amra, one of the owners of Tobacco Road Sports Cafe at the corner of Jones and West street, said Friday afternoon. “They can’t call to see if we’re open. They’re calling our other locations, thank God.”. Thursday night, the restaurant evacuated about 200 people, closing abruptly. It opened an hour later than normal Friday to clean up from the night before. Amra said that the bar area was beginning to fill up Friday afternoon but that it wasn’t as packed as it ...

Raleigh Fire Sparks More Urgency To Hire Firefighters In Winston-salem

... Sawyer says a “five-alarm” fire usually means one thing for all departments. “The five alarm fire pretty much means all hands on deck, as many people as we can get to rectify the situation,” said Sawyer. “That's a pretty big fire.”. It took more than 130 Raleigh firefighters to put the fire out on Thursday night. To put that into perspective, at any given time, Greensboro has 151 firefighters on the clock. Winston-Salem has 88 but now the city wants to hire more. "We want to always make sure that we hire according to the population and the needs for our city,” said Sabrina Stowe with the Winston-Salem Fire Department. “We want to have them on staff and ready to go before anything happens.". The Winston-Salem Fire Department says the shortage is due to a lot of firefighters retiring or being promoted recently. As a result, the department wants to hire at least 20 more firefighters in the next month. But first, new employees have to undergo at least 6 months of training before they can officially suit up. So if we face a situation like what ...

Local Businesses, Church Helping Feed Raleigh First Responders After 5-alarm Fire

... church also went to the scene Friday morning to hand out free food and coffee to firefighters, many of whom were still working to put out hot spots before investigators arrived on scene around noon. “It’s our motto here. That’s what you see on the back of our shirts,’be nice,’ so anytime we have an opportunity to be nice, we really try to be,” said Leigh Holloway with the Edenton Street UMC. There is also help today for businesses impacted by the fire. The Raleigh Chamber tweeted that their office is available from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. to displaced business owners and business leaders who need a downtown base of operations with Wi-Fi, copiers and coffee. “Raleigh is a community that believes in helping each other and collaboration and we want to make sure we keep that going,” said Vernessa Robert with the Raleigh ...