Families, business owners still displaced after January Main Street fire
Main Street property damage from Jan. 31 fire. Photo by Vijayata Dahal.
Several Winooski families remain without homes after a January fire in the Main Street area damaged three buildings, displacing residents and businesses.
The Jan. 31 fire started at a residential apartment on Main Street above a cell phone repair shop and spread to two neighboring buildings, one on the same street and one on Stevens Street, according to fire officials. At least 8 people are without a home, according to the American Red Cross, and three businesses below the apartments were significantly damaged, including Asian General Market, the Phone City and Lara Tax and Insurance Services.
The buildings and homes will be demolished. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
On the morning of the fire, Bhim Mangar, owner of the Asian General Market, was driving to work as usual when he saw Main Street blocked, with multiple fire trucks in his store parking lot.
“Seeing my store in that condition really broke me. I started this business with no prior experience to support my family,” Mangar said. “It was finally doing extremely well. In fact, my son had quit his full-time job to help me run the store. Now, I don’t know how I will be able to pay my mortgage and put my younger kids through college.”
Mangar and his family emigrated to Vermont in 2012 from a refugee camp in Nepal as part of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ resettlement program. The store was his first business venture. He opened it in 2018 in hopes of improving his family’s financial situation.
“My family and I were living in a basement apartment with no natural light,” Mangar said. “When I heard this store was up for sale, I saw it as an opportunity to fulfill my family’s dream of owning our own home.”
It took two years for the store to pick up, Mangar said, but the Asian General Market had become a favorite among Winooskians.
“Most of my customers were people of Asian and African origins,” he said. “They came looking for ancestral foods such as bamboo shoots, plantains, bokchoy, et cetera, and they would be delighted seeing fruits and vegetables from their motherland, which also made me very happy.”
Bhim Mangar, owner of the Asian General Market. Photo by Vijayata Dahal.
The buildings, owned by Handy Family Enterprises, will be demolished, nearly 100 years after their construction. Mangar hopes he can reopen his store if a new structure is built.
“My customers tell me they will visit my store anywhere in Vermont, but I know I will not find a better location than here,” Mangar said. “If Handy provides me a space in their new construction, I am willing to wait no matter how many years it takes.”
The Phone City and Lara Tax and Insurance Services were owned and operated by Winooski resident Raghu Acharya. Acharya and his family resettled in Vermont in 2011 from a refugee camp in Nepal. After many years of working in customer service, Acharya opened Phone City to make phone services more accessible for people like him in Winooski.
“A lot of people in Winooski don’t have cars, and they don’t speak English,” Acharya said. “I saw people taking two city buses just to buy a new phone case or put service in their devices. I opened my store to make such tasks easier for my community members.”
Acharya has since expanded his business ventures to provide personal and business insurance, tax and payroll services, and green card assistance, through Lara Tax and Insurance.
“I do everything I can to help my customers,” Acharya said. “Most of my customers are new Americans from all over the world who come to me due to my multilingual skills. My goal is to close the language, and cultural barriers, so many immigrants face in Vermont. If you can’t speak English in this country, you can’t do much. The communication burden is entirely on your shoulders, and I don’t want that for my customers.”
The source of the fire was directly above Acharya’s office.
“All of my clients’ files, paperwork, my furniture and electronic equipment have been destroyed completely by the fire and water used to put down the fire,” Acharya said.
The fire occurred during tax season, Acharya’s busiest time of the year. With his office gone, Acharya said his customers feel stranded. He is temporarily renting a small space inside a friend’s restaurant while he finds a new spot. But, he said, it’s difficult to find an affordable and convenient location in Winooski.
“While the fire did not harm anyone physically, it has caused us so much trouble,” Acharya said.“I hope no one has to go through what we did in the past month.”
Raghu Acharya, owner of The Phone City and Lara Tax and Insurance Services. Photo courtesy of Raghu Acharya.
The fire also displaced a family. A house on Stevens Street, adjacent to the building on Main Street, burned down during the fire. It was the home of Enwa Asende and his family, who emigrated to the United States in 2011 from a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Asende’s son, Oliv Enwa, was the first to notice the fire. Enwa said the fire started from their neighbor’s home and then jumped to their house. Enwa and his family were able to escape unharmed but are now houseless. They lost important paperwork, clothes, furniture and electronics.
“We lost everything in the fire,” said Enwa. “Most importantly, we lost our home of 11 years. Although we are physically okay, the fire has scarred my family forever. I don’t know how long it will take us to recover from this.”
For the past month, Enwa’s family has been living in a hotel and trying to find new housing, an almost impossible task given Vermont’s rigorous housing market, Enwa said. Community members have rallied to support the family: A GoFundMe to help them had raised more than $11,850 as of Feb. 28.
Enwa Asende and Oliv Enwa’s damaged home on Steven’s Street. Photo by Vijayata Dahal.
Along with being a vital source of ethnic foods and electronic services, 246 Main St. is a local landmark. According to the Winooski Vermont Historical Society, the original structure was constructed around 1925 by Albert Miller and his wife, Josephine, as the A&M Tydol Filling Station. The Millers resided above the store.
The Millers added a garage bay adjacent to the home and station before expanding their property to include three more service bays. The couple’s daughter, Jeanette, and her husband, John, lived at the Stevens Street home of Asende, a 1920s bungalow.
When Albert Miller retired in 1950, Johnny Blair acquired the business and ran Johnny’s Tire and Battery for many years until his son, Mike, took over the business and became a trusted mechanic in the community. Later, the Handy family took over the properties and started renting to small businesses.
This article is part of Winooski Voices, an initiative by The Winooski News to hire local contributors to report and write news stories in community languages such as Nepali, Somali, French, Swahili and others. Contributors receive up to $200 for each published news story. Interested? Or know someone who might be? Contact us at news@thewinooskinews.com.