Fire at Healing Arts Center

HEAL BIZ BURNED

Say wood shavings in closet may have sparked fire

By: Kristy Barry

Posted: 11/14/06

A small fire broke out at a building on the corner of Halsey and Bleeker streets Friday, damaging a business that was planning to open this week and the apartment of two Rutgers-Newark volleyball players who lived above it.

Newark firefighters responded to a distress call at 6:19 p.m. at 47 Halsey Street, next door to the Affordable Copies store, and the fire was contained twenty minutes later, a Fire Department spokesman said.

The fire destroyed portions of the first floor of the three-story building and caused heavy smoke damage to the other levels, said Kenneth Marcel, Newark deputy fire chief.

Firefighters chopped down the front door and shattered the storefront window while smoke billowed out.

"When I saw the smoke, I thought I had lost everything," said Arelis Hernandez, who owns the first floor store with her husband Luis.

"There was a small fire in a closet," Marcel said at the scene on Friday. "It appears as if the owner was sanding and the shavings caught on fire."

Sanding sheets stay hot and have a low flash point, Marcel said. The shavings piled up and the heat collected to form a fire, he said.

The couple was renovating the store to create a healing center that would offer counseling, anger management, yoga, salsa dance classes, massages and meditation, Arelis said. They were expecting to open the center on Nov. 13 or 14, she said.

"We were hoping to open shortly, it's been a lot of work but we wanted to make sure the place was nice, we took the time to do it right," Luis Hernandez said.

The couple's new yoga and healing center was a chance for them "to do something for the neighborhood," Hernandez said.

Two R-N Men's Volleyball players, Mark Hulse and Clinton Haugen, live on the third floor of the building. "Shit happens," was Haugen's reaction to the fire.

Despite the fire, Arelis and Luis haven't given up on their dream business.

"It's still going to happen, just not soon enough," Luis said.

After the firefighters had left, the Hernandezes waited outside amid shattered glass and debris strewn on the sidewalk, when a homeless man approached the couple and said, "I know this is bad timing, but can any of you spare any change?"

Without saying a word, Arelis dug into her wallet and gave the man some change.

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