Lookshin’s Super Wash Laundromat Suffers Heavy Smoke Damage in Vent Fire

 

Trent Lookshin surveys damage to his family’s South Shore Road laundromat.

Cruz Bay — A Friday evening fire which may have started in a lint-filled dryer vent seriously damaged Lookshin’s Super Wash Laundromat on South Shore Road between Donald Schnell’s Amore complex and Baked in the Sun bakery.

The tenant escaped from one of two second-floor apartments without fire exits during the smokey fire which left the interior of the metal building covered in soot. The other tenant, a Cruz Bay pizza chef known as Jose, was not home at the time of the fire.

Two battalions of the V.I. Fire Service responded to the initial alarm and doused the fire, but the fire subsequently reignited sometime after midnight apparently in an area of dryer vents between the rear of of the laundromat and the neighboring bakery.

This was the second fire catastrophe to hit Lookshin family properties in little more than one year. Cafe Roma restaurant on the second floor of the downtown Cruz Bay building which houses the Lookshin’s Joe’s Diner was gutted by fire in April 2013 and reopened didn’t reopen until early 2014.

Trent Lookshin said the laundromat property was insured and he was already removing fire debris from the family property and making arrangements to have the building power-washed of the thick black soot in preparation for reopening.

Lookshin had not determined what damage had been done to equipment.