WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Nearly a week later and the Weaver Fertilizer Plant fire is still impacting businesses nearby the facility.
Several businesses inside the earlier evacuation zone area said they are playing catch up. Even though it was only a few days, to a small business that can add up to a lot of work and business lost.
"We were hoping 2022 would be uneventful, but so much for that one," Perry Clark said.
Clark is the president of Allegra, a printing business in Winston-Salem. He said his company was one of the many in the initial one-mile evacuation zone.
"Really the uncertainty was the scariest thing," Clark said.
Clark said his staff was either able to work from home or from another location, but they are still feeling the impacts from being closed for several days.
"We had to work Saturday to try and catch up and we've been playing catch-up all week," Clark said. "Hopefully there won't be any repercussions and we probably won't know that until another 30 days with any loss of business and that sort of thing, but it was pretty crazy just scrambling.”
Clark wasn’t the only one. Blake Ashburn works at Cross Hose and Fittings. The Weaver Plant is visible from their parking lot.
"I know for us personally we do a lot of counter sales stuff so that definitely hurt us as well we have not been able to ship orders out, it also put us behind for UPS to drop off today, and a lot of receiving, trying to get caught back up on that," Ashburn said.
Ashburn said while some of their employees were also able to work from home or other locations, he was happy to turn the open sign back on.
"It’s not easy working from home so I was ready to be back," Ashburn said. "I’m surprised it didn’t last longer or was further out, I would have thought it would have been.”