FIRES HIT BOWLING CENTERS AND PRO SHOP

A fire ripped through the pro shop next door to Dixie Bowl & Billiards in St., George, Utah, doing much more damage to the shop than to the bowl.

The center was open when smoke began leaking in, and the front desk attendant quickly evacuated the facility. Co-owner Elizabeth Sustin said the center had to close for a few days to deal with waterlogged carpeting near the snack bar.

Fortunately for the bowl, it is separated from the pro shop by a wall, and the two businesses have separate entrances. As a result, its 12 lanes and vintage above-lane ball returns were not damaged. The main damage was caused by the firefighters, who cut a hole in the center’s roof to help the smoke escape.

“Looks like we can add a sunroof, Sustin joked.

Other late-summer fire (and hurricane) news:

• More than two dozen firefighters were unable to save B-52 Roadhouse & Lanes from an early morning blaze that gutted the building in Harvey, North Dakota. A report of heavy smoke pouring out of the center came shortly after midnight, and firefighters trying to get inside were forced back by the thick smoke and had to battle the blaze from outside. “Words cannot express how we feel right now,” a post on the center’s Facebook page read. “8 years of hard work gone in a few hours.” Harvey, home to about 1,600, is located about 75 miles northeast of Bismarck.

• QC Family Entertainment in Moline, Illinois, was damaged in a fire iearly this month. Fortunately, the building’s sprinkler system extinguished the blaze, and the center was closed for only a few days for clean-up.

• A fire at the former Star Bowling Lanes in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, did substantial damage to the interior of the building in late August. It took local firefighters about three-and-a-half hours to knock down the flames. The center closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and never reopened.

• Bowling centers managed to escape the ravages of the wildfires on Maui and the winds and storm surges of Hurricane Idalia as it swept through Florida and other East Coast states. Maui’s only tenpin venue, Wailuku Lanes, a center dating back to the 1940s when it operated with pinboys, is located well east of the fire-ravaged community of Lahaina, while Idalia caused some business disruption but no reported damage to centers. In Honolulu, a fire swept through the long-abandoned Bowl-O-Drome, which is slated to be transformed into affordable housing.