Burned rubble replaces shops
The F.P. Kolbe gift shop on River Road in Point Pleasant was not badly damaged in Sunday’s blaze. But behind the store’s rustic clutter, it looks like a bomb went off.
An official cause has not been determined, but state police fire marshal Anthony Rhodunda said Tuesday the fire that destroyed several businesses appears to have been an electrical malfunction at the back of the Trading Post’s main showroom.
While Kolbe’s survived, all that remains of the Trading Post are heaps of burned rubble. Piles of terra cotta pots lie beneath more piles of charred, bloated books. Further back, the skeleton of a blacksmith’s shop contains a few recognizable tools beneath yet more piles of blackened remains.
Newtown resident Ray Mathis spent Tuesday sorting through what’s left of that workshop, where he’s crafted his metal works for the past 20 years. He was working there Sunday when he spotted flames at the Trading Post and alerted the owners.
Most of metal inside Mathis’s shop was expanded by the heat of the fire and contracted by the water thrown in to douse the flames. What remained was, for the most part, a mangled mess. What was salvageable, the blacksmith wasn’t sure how to fix, now that his machinery is gone.
