LITTLE ROCK — When employees detected smoke and spotted a fire Wednesday inside the Party City store in west Little Rock, they thought they could handle it themselves.
“It was a little less than a campfire,” said Nicole Stehle, a supervisor at the business.
Stehle, 21, along with another employee, went looking for a fire extinguisher. But two minutes later, when they returned to the boys’ birthday section where the fire had started, the flames had engulfed the entire aisle.
Stehle, along with four employees and five customers, made it out of the 11218 N. Rodney Parham Road store before fire crews arrived shortly after 2 p.m.
Little Rock Fire Department Capt. Randy Hickmon said flames were licking out of the roof by the time engines arrived.
Emergency crews shut down the stretch of North Rodney Parham Road between Arkansas Valley Drive and Green Mountain Drive to let the eight engines set up around the business.
It took firefighters half an hour to get the fire, which was based in the middle of the store, under control.
By early Wednesday night, investigators still didn’t know what caused the fire, Hickmon said.
He said detectives didn’t suspect foul play.
Hickmon said the store lost $350,000 in inventory, most of which were paper products, and the fire caused roughly $1 million in damage to the building.
Hickmon said the building might be a loss.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 03/08/2012