Vardaman community pitches in after large fire hits downtown
VARDAMAN, Miss. (WCBI) – Business owners in Vardaman are sifting through the ashes after a major fire in the Calhoun County town.
With other departments that helped out on the scene, it showed that there is a tremendous support system surrounding the town.
“It was very important if they hadn’t brought the ladder truck we would have possibly lost at least one more building if not more,” Dustin Pounds said. “It could have just spread like crazy.”
The fire left a large hole in the landscape of downtown Vardaman.
However, assistance from departments in Calhoun and neighboring counties helped prevent an even bigger disaster.
“When you talk about a small town this is a big percentage of our businesses and stuff that went away,” James Casey said. “I can’t say enough about volunteer firefighters that volunteer their time and they fought this from 3:30 in the morning to about 9:00 and all of them had jobs somewhere they had to go to.”
Vardaman mayor, James Casey said it was one of the biggest fires to hit the town.
Vardaman Police Chief, Dustin Pounds said it took the effort of 11 departments to bring the blaze under control.
“The support from the community and the surrounding communities from all of these different departments that come in and help,” Pounds said. “Not only the departments that come in and help but just the outreach from you know the citizens to assist in any way that they can. They opened up the music room across from the fire and people just started bringing in food for the firemen and first responders because they had been out fighting this fire for multiple hours at that time and they were getting weak and drained.”
Now, the men say it’s time for that community support to shift to helping these businesses and the town rise up from the ashes.
The owners of the grocery store that burned have started a GoFundMe: www.gofundme.com/support-family-business
