PORT TOWNSEND — City officials are preparing to provide food and lodging for a half-dozen neighbors displaced by Monday’s fire at Aldrich’s grocery as Red Cross funding is depleted.
“The residents come first,” Port Townsend Assistant Fire Chief Tom Aumock said Thursday. “We’ll deal with the cost later as a city.”
Investigators went into the basement of the razed building at 940 Lawrence St. on Thursday, but have yet to draw any conclusions about the cause of the fire.
The six displaced people who live in a four-plex behind Aldrich’s shared a bottle of wine and a pizza at Lanza’s Italian Ristorante on Thursday evening, just half a block away from the scene of the fire that left them temporarily homeless.
An unstable back wall on the Aldrich’s building has raised safety concerns and prompted the city to close the four-plex they live in at 724 Tyler St.
Aumock and Police Chief Kristen Anderson gave the residents an update on where the efforts to get them back into their homes stand.
The American Red Cross has given the apartment residents hotel rooms and food vouchers since the fire.
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The rest of the story appears in Friday’s Peninsula Daily News.
