HERRIMAN, Utah — Following the initial shock of the weekend fire and explosion that has closed their stores indefinitely, local Herriman business owners and employees are wondering what's next.
"Oh yeah, it was a wild phone call. The store was on fire. A car had crashed into the building," recalled Debbie Merrill, the owner of the Jimmy John's on 13400 South and 5200 West, of getting the initial word on what occurred.
Those who lived near the crash site were jolted out of bed by the explosion and eventual evacuations.
"Most of my family was already asleep, and I heard, I think, the initial accident," said resident Aaron Stevens. "From our angle, you couldn’t see where the car impacted, so I thought it was like a kitchen fire that had gotten out of control.
Herriman family describes being one of the first at scene of fire, explosion:
"So we took our daughter outside and we were kind of watching and we were like, 'Hey, look at the firefighters doing their thing,' thought it would be a good teaching moment to let our 5-year-old see firefighters doing heroic stuff, and then the building blew up! Which kind of freaked all of us out."
The accident happened about 10 minutes after the Jimmy John's location had closed for the night. Merrill said that as bad as the damage was to her store, they're grateful no customers were inside and her three employees were able to get out safely.
Days later, Merrill continues to thank everyone who acted so heroically to ensure the safety of the crowd that gathered at the scene.
Video below shows fire following explosion (Courtesy: Dave Young):
"Those brave employees. Our shift manager is the one who evacuated the building, helped pull one of the passengers out of the car, and just kept his head and managed to get everybody out of there, get everybody back, and just in time," she said.
Stevens originally believed the fire was dying down when his family was shaken quite literally,
"The firefighters got the fire on the outside suppressed really quickly, and so we thought this is it, we’re wrapping this up, and then you know, it blows sky high," he shared.
Even before the evacuation orders that followed the explosion, Stevens said one police officer encouraged him to get his family out of harm's way. The family stayed at a hotel until the area was deemed safe hours later.
"It was wild!" he said Tuesday. "It’s surreal even seeing it now. Like you don’t see stuff like that every day."
Days later, things are much quieter. Typically, it would be bustling at the Jimmy John's, Domino's Pizza and SuperCuts, which were all destroyed in the fire and blast.
"I hope everybody landed on their feet, jobwise," Stevens added, saying he and his family have come to know and appreciate so many of the employees. "We’ve been living here the past three years and have been in all three businesses at least a handful of times."
He was glad to hear of efforts underway to find work for those who have been displaced. Two nearby Jimmy John's locations are trying to add time for the 19 employees affected by the Herriman closure.
"Obviously, it’s a little bit difficult to try and find 450 hours of availability for employees at two other locations, but we’re working to get everybody as close to their normal hours as we can," Merrill said.
Jimmy John's is also expanding the UberEats delivery area to encompass Herriman and the customers that would have been served by the now-closed shop until further notice.
"Hopefully, we will continue to take care of our customers in that area until we can rebuild," added Merrill.
For now, Merrill is grateful the situation wasn't worse.
"If that explosion had gone anywhere but up, it could have been really bad for everybody," she said. "This could have been so much worse, so I’m really just grateful."
