Store owner, Native American bands assess damage after Minneapolis fire

A day after a three-alarm fire destroyed a south Minneapolis store and damaged a neighboring building owned by the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, occupants assessed the damage on Monday.

Abdullahi Omar said he was restocking the shelves of his store at 1300 E. Franklin Ave. on Sunday afternoon and had gone down to the basement when he heard his brother yelling. When he came back upstairs, he saw smoke rising from the north side of the building.

Omar said he grabbed a fire extinguisher, but the flames were already too high. He said that by the time fire crews arrived a short time later, flames had spread through the building. Omar and his brother evacuated the building safely.

“There is nothing I can do,” Omar said at the scene on Monday.

The fire hollowed out Omar’s business, Dollar Plus — and fire officials said the flames also reached the neighboring building. It’s owned by the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, the federally recognized tribal entity that provides office space to the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Both offices serve urban tribal members and neighborhood residents needing food support, clothing and other goods. The building also houses archives of historical materials.

Jacque Wilson, the Bois Forte Urban Office coordinator, was inside with a group of elders who gather every Sunday to sew and bead. They were packing up for the day around 4 p.m. when Wilson said she smelled something burning.

“This kid comes banging on the door because the doors are always locked, and said, ‘There's a fire.’ So, we all ran out,” Wilson said.

All five people in the sewing group self-evacuated safely.

Wilson urged people to watch for notices from each office about where services will re-open.

“It’s not clear where any of us are going to be working,” Wilson said.

Amanda Linden has led the Fond du Lac Urban Office for the past 18 years. The office regularly hands out food, diapers, baby formula, socks and shoes to neighborhood residents. Those supplies were spared, but Linden had to turn away people seeking services.

“I’m wondering where I’m going to store that stuff to continue getting it to the people that need it,” Linden said.

With the electricity turned off, staff are planning to cook stored bison, walleye and venison at a community feast Thursday in the building’s parking lot.

Minneapolis fire officials said the investigation is ongoing and that the cause of the fire remained undetermined on Monday. They asked anyone who witnessed the fire to come forward with information.

The Minneapolis Fire Department said Sunday that crews who went inside the store to battle the flames found large amounts of stored items blocking the aisles, making it difficult to reach the fire. Shelving collapsed onto hose lines, and two firefighters were briefly blocked from leaving when more shelving fell. They were treated for minor injuries and were released the same day.

Lapsed insurance

Omar started the business as a dollar store and later renamed it Dollar Plus, selling household goods, beauty supplies and tobacco products. Omar bought the building five years ago. He said he carried insurance for the first three-and-a-half years — but let his insurance lapse after his premiums kept rising, and sales declined.

“My business goes down, down, down, down. Then, for that reason, I cancel my insurance,” Omar said.

Omar said he will likely rely on help from the Somali community and from Minnesotans more broadly, as he begins to recover.

Omar was on scene Monday working alongside a small team he’s hired to begin clearing debris from the sidewalk around the building.

Archives untouched by fire and water

Byron Lumbar, who handles security and building maintenance for the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, said the Fond du Lac side of the building took on heavy water and smoke damage, with parts of the roof still bulging with water from fire hoses, while the Bois Forte offices sustained smoke damage. Lumbar said Monday that the building was not yet safe to re-enter.

Lumbar said curriculum materials and archives of Wicoie Nandagikendan, an urban Indigenous language immersion program that operates out of a separate building on Lake Street, were untouched by fire or water damage.

Lumbar also said he believes the archives of The Circle, a Native American quarterly publication, were spared from water damage in the building’s basement because they were raised off the floor on wooden pallets. Robert Pilot, editor of The Circle, confirmed the archive had not been damaged.

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