EVANSVILLE — The first wall at Pike’s Mattress collapsed at about 4:50 p.m. Saturday, some 40 minutes after callers began reporting heavy smoke billowing from the venerable family business.
Shortly after that, the first of three firefighters who would suffer heat stress injuries went to the hospital. By Sunday afternoon, Evansville Fire Department Deputy Chief Kim Garrett told reporters Monday, all three had been released. No employees or customers had been inside the business, which was closed.
About 60 firefighters in all fought the blaze, though Garrett said they couldn’t be certain they had completely eliminated hotspots and fire extensions until nearly 24 hours after the first call came in on Saturday.
That was the human cost demanded by the pitiless inferno that completely destroyed the century-old Pike’s Mattress brick building at 213 W. Division St., near the Lloyd Expressway and Read Street in Evansville.
The destruction to property was evident in piles of bricks, mounds of charred and unrecognizable property — and in extensive damage from radiant heat to two billboards that had towered above the building.