Dairy Queen owner devastated after fire

Dec. 23--When Bob McCray was called and told the roof of the building housing his Dairy Queen franchise was on fire, he hoped it might be a quick fix. When he arrived in Dalton from his home in Gwinnett County Tuesday morning, he knew he was wrong.

"It's just devastating," McCray said after seeing the damage left by Monday night's fire, which engulfed the building in the Market Street Shops of Dalton outlet mall. "I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect this."

McCray and his wife Janet weren't even able to get into the building after making the trip from Dacula on Tuesday. The entire roof of the building had collapsed, and the parking lot was strewn with debris from the battle against the blaze.

"I just don't know what comes next," McCray said. "I thought it was a fire on the roof and it might be something we could have replaced and fixed relatively quickly. But we can't even get in there right now."

McCray said the business, which he and wife Janet have owned for six years, typically employs 16 or 17 people during the busy summer months but there were currently 11 employees. No employees or customers were injured in the fire, and he has been in contact with his insurance company, which he said should have had people on the scene Tuesday.

"We are going to try to figure out how to help all of these employees," McCray said. "This is a bad time of the year for something like this to happen."

Dalton Fire Department and Whitfield County Fire Department personnel battled the fire after the call came in around 6:30 Monday night of smoke and flames coming from the roof of the building. Aerial trucks from the city as well as responders with the county took on the blaze, but the building was "a complete loss," according to Dalton Fire Department Capt. Alan Ridley, who was at the scene Monday night.

Whitfield County Fire Department officials have taken over the case since the fire occurred outside of the Dalton city limits, but Battalion Chief Kevin McDermott said an active investigation of the fire is not being conducted since there was no reason to suspect foul play.

"We will leave that up to the owner's insurance company to conduct an investigation, but if we had any indications of a suspicious fire we would still be on the scene," McDermott said. "There was some cellphone video from one of the employees and we don't think that it started in the kitchen. It seemed to be more electrical and in the roof."

Firefighters had to run hoses from the scene back to a hydrant with greater water pressure on the north side of Walnut Avenue, forcing the closure of the busy section of road from Market Street west to the intersection of Dug Gap/Tibbs Bridge Road for nearly an hour and a half.

McDermott said the closure was because of the amount of water pressure needed to contain the blaze. He said the hydrants in the outlet mall area are privately owned and not maintained or regulated by the fire departments.

"For unknown reasons, the pressures were not enough from the hydrants we were using," McDermott said. "That was the reason we had to tap into the Walnut Avenue hydrants to tap into a larger main line. The hydrants worked, but it was not enough pressure for the trucks we were using."

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