Olivia’s Shop, a women’s clothing consignment store, on Route 1 in northern Bel Air is expected to be closed for several months following a fire last week.
Owner Jarod Thurston said that when his Ring camera app notified him of movement outside his business on Feb. 14, he assumed that there was a burglary happening. As he checked the footage, a firetruck entered the frame, and soon after he found himself racing up Route 1 toward his store.
“I mean, I had never seen so many trucks. Route 1 was almost blocked off,” Thurston said. “It was all put out pretty quick, I’d say within a 10- to 15-minute period, they had it pretty good. There still were some embers, so they kept watering it.”
The fire broke out in one of the two apartments above the store around 12:12 a.m., according to the Maryland Office of the State Fire Marshal, and is believed to have been caused by a space heater coming in contact with a combustible object. A 7-year-old inside the apartment woke up his mother, and they were able to safety evacuate along with an 18-month-old child and two dogs, according to a news release from the fire marshal.
Thirty firefighters from the Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company contained the fire to the apartment’s bedroom and adjacent rooms. The apartment experienced significant heat, smoke, soot and water damage, while Olivia’s Shop sustained mostly water damage.
“This whole building’s got holes in these wood floors, so all the water went to the basement,” Thurston said, noting that he and his brother had to remove wet clothes and other supplies from the bottom floor over the weekend.
Less than a year ago, the Thurstons experienced another tragedy. In May, their mother, Sonja Thurston, died following a sudden asthma attack. Sonja founded Olivia’s Shop at the Route 1 location in 2008.
“It was the worst thing I ever dealt with in my life, and it looks like this [fire] is the second. It’s right behind that,” Jarod Thurston said. He took control of the business after his mother passed, noting that the store was “basically [their] second home.”
For that nostalgic reason, Jarod said Olivia’s Shop is not moving, and instead, he’ll spend the next several months repairing the store’s interior and sorting out business transactions with local cosigners who may have lost clothes in the fire. He said that he had just finished dealing with the impact of his mother’s death last spring.
“There’s so much paperwork and just so many things to get it switched over from her name to my name, and I’m literally just getting the taxes. Then boom, this happens,” Thurston said.
Thurston advised consigners to email him at oliviasshop2721@gmail.com should they have any questions or concerns. He mentioned that the store’s phone is not currently active. Callers will receive an automatic response stating the store is closed, but he has been doing his best to return messages.
Thurston said he has received estimates that it may take three to nine months before customers will be able to return to Olivia’s. In the meantime, he, along with volunteers Wendy Schwarz and Joanne Salvio-Carmen, will sort through racks of clothes, assess salvageable items and coordinate donation efforts.
Olivia’s Shop donates items from its inventory that remain after 60 days to the veterans organization, AMVETS, Thurston said; those donations are expected to continue when the store reopens. He said a large pile of donated winter clothing escaped damage in the fire and will be donated as planned. The trio must also sort through consignors’ items and set aside those requested for return.
While the interior damage can be covered by insurance, Thurston said there was no protection for items on consignment. He now must work to pay consigners for items that were destroyed and believes that more than 400 consigners had items in the building at the time of the fire. To help with this effort, he set up a GoFundMe with a $7,000 goal.
“I’d just like to pay [the consigners] back the best I could, and do everything my mom would do,” he said. “I’d like to reopen, and if you don’t pay people back or do something to help people, it’s just hard to bring them back.”
Thurston expressed gratitude Wednesday for those who have donated almost $5,000 so far and for the consignors who waived their outstanding payments. “I also just thank God that this place didn’t burn down. I want to thank the firefighters for putting the fire out and thank that 7-year-old boy for telling his mother to get the people out.”
Have a news tip? Contact Brennan Stewart at bstewart@baltsun.com, 443-800-5902, or @BrennanStewart_ on X.
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