MURRYSVILLE, Pa. — Several businesses in a Murrysville building were damaged by fire overnight.
The fire broke out around 2:35 a.m. in the 4000 block of William Penn Highway.
A tattoo shop, nutrition center, and chiropractor’s practice are located in the building.
Channel 11′s Andrew Havranek spoke with the owner of the Black Armor Tattoo Studio on Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s the worst phone call, one of the worst phone calls you could imagine getting at 3 in the morning, getting woken up to,” said Russ Corbett.
That phone call was from Corbett’s security company. It’s how he found out his business was on fire.
“I quickly got on the security cameras and just saw a bunch of firefighters and blinking lights,” he added.
Corbett said he quickly jumped in his car and made his way from his home about 30 minutes away, worried his business would be gone.
“I was really expecting the worst,” he said.
When he got there, he saw that the firefighters were closer to the chiropractor’s office at the lower corner of the building where his tattoo studio is. They worked to put the fire out, which was mostly contained to that corner of the building.
That corner of the building included Corbett’s computer room where they designed tattoos and stencils.
Later Tuesday morning and into the afternoon, he and one of his tattoo artists worked on moving all of that equipment out and cleaned the studios since they couldn’t actually see clients and give tattoos.
“This could have been a whole lot worse,” Corbett said.
One thing he said helped save Black Armor Tattoo and the other businesses in the building was the person who drove by and reported the fire around 2:30 a.m.
The owner of the building, chiropractor Chuck Tragesser, is thankful for that, too, because it got firefighters to the building as quickly as possible.
“That was a real blessing because we could have lost the whole building,” Tragesser said.
The businesses remained closed Tuesday but are optimistic they can reopen this week. While there is no official word from firefighters on what caused the fire, those who work at the building believe it could have been a cigarette butt inside a potted plant.
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