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WGIL Interview: Butler Fire Victim Just Keeps On Working
FIRST REPORTED 12:00pm 5/6/10 The man whose business was destroyed by a fire at the former Butler Manufacturing plant Tuesday morning says there's not much else he can do but simply, keep working.

Don Owens owns a landscaping business that's located in one of the buildings on the Butler Complex. It was set on fire Monday morning, the result of an alleged arson, and several of his vehicles were either crashed into other Butler buildings and set on fire, or otherwise destroyed.

It's been an emotional couple of days for Owens. But he tells WGIL he and his employees never wanted to stop and close up shop.

"My first thought was, 'I gotta keep on working,'" Owens said. "We've lost our trucks. We've gotta work. I asked the guys -- they all came in early -- and I said 'you got hand tools to go to work?' They said yes. I said 'well, we'll switch things around. You can take my pickup truck, work out of it.' Then they drove their own vehicles over to the job site. By 9:00 (Tuesday morning), they were back to work again."

Owens described the initial scene around the Butler plant where the fire broke out as being like the sort of scene you'd see in a war zone in Afghanistan, not here.

Owens is currently dealing with insurance agents, trying to figure out how much rebuilding he can do. But he says everything inside the business was a total loss.

The fires remain under investigation, and no suspects are in custody.

For more details on the fire and pictures, CLICK HERE.
05 06 10 by Newsroom
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