'Hopeless again': Milwaukee vintage store owners devastated by second fire at U-Haul storage facility

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — Many who kept storage units at a Milwaukee U-Haul facility spent Friday, April 10, cleaning out, after a second fire at the property this year.

The fire broke out Monday night in the south building of the Walker's Point U-Haul complex, causing damage to around 25 storage units on the first floor of the building. According to a U-Haul spokesperson, the second and third floors also have some damage.

Friday and Saturday from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, U-Haul staff and moving helpers will be on site, providing storage containers, dumpsters, boxes and bags for the customers who are impacted.

Less than three months ago, a large fire in a different building at the complex damaged nearly 400 units.

For some customers, this feels like a devastating Deja vu.

"My gut just dropped," said Elizabeth Kiesling, co-owner of Bandit MKE, a vintage store on Brady Street. 

She and her co-owner, Michelle Eigenberg, were baffled to learn the U-Haul facility caught fire again.

"Like, what? Are you kidding? Am I awake? Is this real?" said Eigenberg.

In January, they lost nearly hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise for Bandit in four storage units.

"We only just started cleaning out our stuff from building h a couple of weeks ago," Eigenberg said.

Now, 11 weeks after the first fire, four more of their storage units are trashed - in a different building.

"Those are the things after the last fire that we thought we could process and clean and do something with," Kiesling explained. "But here we are, hopeless again."

Their summer retail stock, items for upcoming markets that will now be cancelled, and everything for their regular overstock sales, was ruined by water, chemicals, soot, and smoke.

"Even if it looks perfect, it stinks," Eigenberg said. "If it's your own stuff, you can manage, but if you're trying to sell that stuff, you can't."

Frustrating is an understatement - for Bandit, and the many others now digging through sodden storage.

"We thought, hey, the stuff in building D after this major fire is probably going to be okay, that's a testament to their fire suppression efforts," Eigenberg explained. "Now here we again, 75 days after the first fire, and it's gone now. It's ridiculous."

The owners said the best way to support Bandit is to visit their store on Brady and show them some love.

"Just smiling faces coming in, seeing us, and reminding us why we're doing this," said Kiesling.

Near their storage units, Eigenberg saw what she thinks could have been the start of the fire.

"It looked like it was a really old heating unit up on the ceiling that was probably part of the old infrastructure of the building," she said. "That was melted and tangled, and all the wires all over were melted and dripping."

The causes of both fires are still unknown and under investigation, but a U-Haul spokesperson said they are unrelated.