After the Christmas Tree in fire, mall reopens Zuzana Hanzelova

Reopening was scheduled for Thursday morning for The Evergreen Plaza Shopping Center, after a fire that destroyed its 35-foot Christmas tree, gifts underneath it, and all decoration in surrounding one hour before the mall's opening Wednesday morning."The flames broke out near the tree in a Santa's Village area about an hour before the 120-store mall's scheduled 10 a.m. opening," said Ron Kleinhaus, Evergreen Park Fire Chief."Then firefighters arrived at the center area of the mall at 9500 S.Western Ave., thick smoke was pouring from the mall's doors, and flames were quickly moving up the tree and spreading to the ceiling," the chief continued. The fire destroyed an area, where Christmas present packaging, plastic reindeer, small plastic bushes and shrubs were. "All the stuff related to being around a big Christmas tree is gone," Kleinhaus said. "Because of the combustible material in the decorations & plastic and cardboard & that creates that thick, black, acrid smoke that just spreads like crazy."Fortunately, no one was hurt. Only a few mall walkers had to be evacuated along with some early-morning employees. Two people were treated for minor smoke inhalation, but were not taken to hospital. The main cause of this fire still remains under official investigation by both the Fire department and an insurance company. One of the oldest enclosed shopping centers in the Chicago area remained closed for the rest of the day, except for its two retailers: "Carson Pirie Scott and Office Depot, both of them have separate outside entrances. Also, an Applebee's restaurant in the parking lot was allowed to stay open," said Norma Jean Martinez, the mall's management office receptionist. She also added, that the management was waiting to hear about reopening the mall for Thursday from fire inspectors. "We're definitely still going to have Santa and not let anything ruin the holidays," she said, but added that they will not bring in another giant tree. "But the Christmas music will still be going on, and all the stores will still be decorated."Although the stores have some smoke damage, Kleinhaus said: "We're just starting to see how bad the damage was," Kleinhaus said.

by Zuzana Hanzelova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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edited by Tatiana Kucharikova