Murri Watch HQ, eight family businesses trashed in West End blaze

UPDATE: Three clothing companies lost their Christmas stock and a group which provides vital help to Indigenous people has been trashed in an overnight Brisbane fire.

Two clothing companies lost their Christmas stock and a group which provides vital help to homeless Indigenous people have been trashed in an overnight West End fire.

More than a dozen firefighting crews were kept busy in the city’s south overnight and early this morning, November 10, putting out the Norfolk St fire, which began just after midnight, and another blaze at a long-abandoned factory in Assembly St, Salisbury, which started at 8.38pm.

Ten fire crews were called to reports of smoke from the West End building, where they did a primary search and sweep of both levels before extinguishing the fire by 2.20am.

The fire began in the offices of family-owned traffic survey company Matrix Traffic and Transport Data.

It was not suspicious and was caused by an electrical fault, possibly battery chargers.

Matrix state manager Jeremy Parsons said he raced to the scene after fearing some of their 23 office and field staff might be inside, as they sometimes worked night shifts.

Will Li surveys the damage to his Sunshine Fashion wholesale clothing business.

“This is a niche market with a small set of clients. They’ve been really good and told us they would understand if we have to postpone surveys,’’ he said.

“We’ve been here 18 months. Due to Covid, we’re all set up to work remotely and our data is in the cloud, but we’ve lost equipment.’’

Will Li, owner of clothing wholesaler Sunshine Fashion, said he opened in Montague Central in 2011 the day after the flood but survived that and the 2022 flood.

This time he was not so lucky, with soot covering all his Christmas stock and extensive water damage from fire hoses.

Celia Ryan Clothing’s Pauline Davidson and her business partner Martin Pobar were unable to get inside to assess the extent of the damage.

But she expected soot and water had destroyed all the stock at their wholesale business, which opened in 1988.

“We had all our Christmas stock in there. It’s a besser block building — who would have thought it would catch on fire?’’ she said.

“There’s nothing we can do at this stage, we have to wait for the assessors.’’

The remains of the Matrix Traffic and Transport Data office.

Damage inside the Matrix office.

Mike Gurowski, owner of Inline Trading clothing wholesaler, said smoke and water had ruined the stock at their 13-year-old business.

Others substantially damaged included Kabana Shop online resort wear wholesaler, which was due to have reopened a retail outlet at the shop tomorrow, November 11.

A chiropractor and an upmarket lighting company, Luxson Illumination, were also damaged.

Luxson co-owner Billy Daye said the premises was a training facility, distribution point and showroom for interior decorators and architects, so they had not lost much stock.

He was hoping they could temporarily move to a commercial storage facility.

A Murri Watch employee said its upstairs office was now unusable.

“It’s our headquarters but we can still do our street (outreach) work,’’ she said.

“We still need a place to operate from. It’s very stressful because we were already so busy.

All nine businesses in Montague Central in West End were affected by the fire.

“Our budget is also not great — we’re a community organisation — but we have good partnerships and will be reaching out for help.’’

She said Murri Watch was stretched to the limit already because many Indigenous people had been transferred to Brisbane because of overcrowding in north Queensland watch houses.

Murri Watch provides various kinds of practical support to indigenous people in need.

The “substantial fire” at the Salisbury warehouse required six fire crews, who put the fire out by 9.10pm. Embers reignited at 3am, triggering a small fire.

QFES and QPS investigators are looking into the cause.