Recovery plans in motion one month after Adams Street Fire

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) — Before it was destroyed by a fire last month, the historic Adams Street building was the home of 12 apartment residents and multiple businesses. Now, the displaced businesses are making plans to move elsewhere.

"During the fire, we had nine cats and luckily we got them all out and safe across the street at Buzz Bomb," said Tom Raymond, Founder of Cat's Pyjamas. "Even on the day of the fire, we had some people come through asking to help carry the cages, which we definitely needed help with."

Raymond said overall, he has been blown away by the help the community has offered. Within days of the fire, eight of the cats found new homes. The only other cat was receiving unrelated medical care.

That community support was felt deeply by Chris Richmond as well. He is the President of Moving Pillsbury Forward, which had an exhibit of materials found at the Pillsbury site located inside the building.

"As we watched the fire department operations for a few hours, we tried to assess whether anything at all was going to be salvageable and on that day, it really looked like it was all going to be lost," said Richmond.

Luckily, Richmond was able to get into the building recently and recovered about 30% of the material, including many one-of-a-kind pieces. These include a pair of work boots found in a locker on site, a typewriter, custom scoops for ingredients, and a panel depicting an early version of the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

"Right now we're really trying to assess what we have and clean up the artifacts that we recover," said Richmond. "We are resolved to reconstitute an exhibit sometime in the future, and I think we'd love to do that downtown again if at all possible."

Springfield Fire Chief Ed Canny says this is one of the biggest fires the downtown area has seen in recent years. In total, fire personnel were on scene for 12 hours.

"Overall we had over 70 people on scene, and all of the fire apparatuses in Springfield did respond at one point or the other because it was so hot," said Canny.