Silver Lining

The offers of help have spread faster than the fire that destroyed over half of Deborah Youngwirth C.P.A. office last week.

“This is the reason why I live here,” Youngwirth said.  “So many people have been so nice between buying us lunch, giving us gift certificates for lunch, sending us flowers and Boundary Trading Co. even gave us some old carts so we can sort the papers.  People have been really patient with us.”

A four-alarm fire on Aug. 3  heavily damaged Riverside Auto Center and Youngwirth’s accounting office which was located on the second floor of the building.

After seeing the photos of the fire Youngwirth said she is shocked they salvaged so many documents,  especially since none of the furniture or fixtures in her office could be recovered.

“Over half of the building was rubble, wiped out,” she said.  The other half suffered smoke and heat damage, but we are getting paper documents I thought were lost that are actually salvageable.”

Youngwirth recovered several documents that had smoke, water and fire damage, and found out about a document recovery service in Colorado and brought them in to help.

“Michael Bettmann, a document recovery specialist, is helping us through the process of mitigating the loss of documents,” said Youngwirth.  “Bettmann told us it takes about 48 to 72 hours for damage of this type to start producing mold, and today, one week later, is the first day we have noticed mold on some of the documents.  I think that is pretty amazing and that all the stars have been in alignment for us.  It is going to be a relatively small percentage of people’s documents that we have lost and we feel very lucky,” said Youngwirth.

The staff has been working hard on ongoing business as well as getting everything back up and running. 

Youngwirth has set up a temporary office at the former Gene’s OK Tire building downtown owned by David Winey.

Winey, who lived on the property, moved out to make room for the accountant and her staff.

“It was very nice for Dave to have displaced himself the way he did for us, and he has been very gracious,” said Youngworth.

On Friday, Youngworth clients began to ask if she was ready for them and Youngworth was happy to say “yes.”

“It is important to me to show that we are still here, still pushing forward and it is business as usual,” she said.  “It may take us a little longer to return a call because we are all juggling things but for the most part is it working out very well.”

“We have just a few computers set up and running until we get a permanent location and Mike Listman with Boundary Computers has been amazing at getting us set up and going as quickly as he did,” Youngwirth said.

She hopes to find a permanent place to do business and get moved in before the winter and definitely before tax season.

“I’ll tell you I couldn’t ask for a better group of girls because they have been fabulous through all of it,” said Youngwirth.  “You know the day after the fire every single one of them were up there (in the building) packing up boxes and trying to get things out the door and running things out in front  since we have been here.”

 “ When something bad happens to somebody here, everyone rallies around one another and I just hope that I can pass it along down the line if  something bad happens to someone else,” said Youngwirth.