More than two months after it was closed due to a suspicious fire, repairs to the Peace Arch Hospital Auxiliary’s Superfluity thrift store are almost done.
Lynne Quigley, the auxiliary’s finance director, said the drywall has been installed.
Painting is next and, if all goes well, the store will reopen by Nov. 1.
Quigley said the Aug. 9 fire caused $100,000 in structural damage.
It has also lost over two months of income from the shuttered store, she added.
The blaze forced the replacement of 15 trusses and extra-thick fire-rated drywall had to be installed, Quigley said.
“And our ceiling is 20 feet high.”
The hospital auxiliary is also out $20,000 in repairs to the roof membrane, completed nine days before the fire.
Quigley spoke Thursday at the 55th anniversary celebration of the White Rock Hospital Auxiliary’s Sunset Group.
After the blaze, White Rock RCMP said it started in a pile of newspapers and magazines that had been left on a couch in the back lane behind the shop at 15163 Prospect Ave.
“Although the fire may have been inadvertently set with the ember from a cigarette, the fact that it may have been deliberately set cannot be ruled out,” Const. Janelle Shoihet said.
The fire at Superfluity was the second blaze in less than two months behind a thrift store in White Rock.
On June 26, a fire that started in a couch behind the Worldserve Thrift store, at 1401 Johnston Rd., scorched the walls and melted a plastic sign in the drop-off dock but did not cause structural damage.
