No Shopping For Awhile. . . . .

UPDATE:

We went to the mall today (Sat the 30th) and there were about 40 stores open and it was CROWDED! Lots of activities like pumpkin carving, games, trick or treating They were giving out 10,000 tee shirts that says “I Love My Mall” with a list of all the fire departments and officials that helped out those first days.  They were then taking pics of everyone in the tee shirts and putting them up on a wall with any sayings you wanted to contribute and then donating $1 for each photo they took to the Red Cross (up to $100,000).

So we had some exciting goings on last week, while Shelley and I were out of town….actually out of the country.. but more about that on the next post.

Seems that a ‘mentally unstable’ 22 year old wanted to get attention because he wasn’t getting it anywhere else, and went into the mall and started it on fire with a backpack filled with kerosene and other stuff.

This mall is a big mall.  It’s one of the biggest, newest, and nicest in the area, and just down the street from our house. Stores include Ruth Chris, Cheesecake Factory (YUM), Sears, Penny’s, Nordstrom’s, Macy’s etc etc etc.  It employs about 2500 people.

After the fire was put out, the entire mall remained closed for over a week, with some (about 40 stores) of the mall re-opening today.  The lucky stores that only had smoke damage were the ones to re-open.  Another 200+ stores that got water damage will be closed at least for another month, (including Penny’s, Sears and Macy’s)  and about 40 stores closest to the fire won’t open for months, up to a year.

The fire caused $55 million in damage, and about $1 million in lost sales DAILY for the past week. (The city gets about $13,000 per day in sales tax revenue).

Here are some pics:

These next two are from inside:

Here is the guy who did it:

What a weird world we live in when people can do such damage as this and effect so many others!