Fire destroys east side businesses

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - A fire ripped through a building that houses several businesses around 9:30 Tuesday night in the 4800 block of Michigan Street, near Emerson on the city's east side.

Firefighters tell 24-Hour News 8 that the building is a complete loss.

For the second time this week, cold temperatures presented a problem for firefighters. It took the first crews on the scene about 10 minutes to find an unfrozen fire hydrant to help battle the blaze.

Firefighters said they initially had to bring in a tank filled with water to attack the fire. "The temperatures, it's really cold out here tonight so we have about 10 fire crews working on this fire, we have to make sure those crews get rehabbed, get warmed up, get in and out so they can go back in and work," said IFD Captain Rita Reith.

Bill Elliot, the owner of Instant Replay, a sporting goods store, says he does plan to rebuild. "We've owned it in since 1998 but the business has been here since 1978, it's amazing now how fast it's burned down, all of our sporting goods were inside, and it's a total loss, I guess," he said.

There were also two other businesses that were housed here, one of them a real estate/insurance agency and the other a recording studio.

The cause is still unknown.