Coffee shop in downtown Colfax destroyed by fire

Steve Warwick finished dropping off a load of supplies at his building in downtown Colfax at about 5:30 p.m Tuesday. Then he headed off to see his daughter, driving back by at 6:45.

Just 15 minutes later, he got the call that Fonks Coffeehouse was on fire.

Fonks was a five-and-dime store for decades in downtown Colfax. The brick building at the end of a city block was considered historic.

In recent years, Fonks has been a coffee shop with the same name. The shop was run by Amy Warwick, Steve’s daughter-in-law.

“Oh, Fonks was so cool,” Steve Warwick said. “I think they wanted to come in and see Amy more than they wanted to get coffee, but then it became a habit.”

At about 7, the Colfax Fire Department got the call that Fonks on Main Street was on fire. When the first crew arrived just 3 minutes later, smoke was pouring out the back of the building, firefighter Shannon Buckley said.

“And then it just started rolling,” Buckley said.

Crews tried to enter the back of the building, but the fire was already too hot.

Rob Shindler, another firefighter, said he was inside the building and put his gloved hand on a wall that wasn’t yet consumed by fire. The wall was so hot he could feel the heat through his Quick Gloves.

The firefighters quickly called in crews from nearby towns such as Rosalia and Pullman. Altogether, 26 fire vehicles and more than 80 first responders helped to control the blaze.

The building is a total loss. For a while, Fire Chief Craig Corbeill said he was worried they would lose the whole block.

“Obviously, we were worried about collapse,” Corbeill said. “Obviously, the brick construction helped.”

While Fonks was unoccupied when the fire started, two residents of the apartments above the shop next door were sent to the hospital.

They, along with a firefighter, have been treated and released. The Red Cross was on the scene Tuesday night to help relocate the apartment residents.

Warwick said he knew the building was a total loss when flames started coming through the roof.

“Then I knew they’re not going to salvage it,” Warwick said.

Warwick used the upstairs of the building to store merchandise for his online clothing business, Team Stores.

Firefighters said the clothes packed into the upstairs storage space were a factor in why the building went up so quickly, but the cause of the fire has yet to be determined.

The firefighters contained the fire in about three hours, but there was heat, smoke and water damage to nearby buildings.

Corbeill owns Bruning-Kimball, a funeral home behind Fonks.

“The impact to our business was pretty minimal,” Corbeill said. “Really, our hearts just go out to the owners at Fonks, because they lost a lot more than we did.”

Kara Davidson runs Leftovers, an antique and thrift store next door to Fonks. Davidson left her business about 15 minutes before the fire was reported.

She was “incredibly nervous” as she watched the fire burn from her apartment across the street.

There was minimal damage to the building and her merchandise, including an early 1900s navy-blue steam trunk prominently displayed in the window next to Fonks, was unharmed.

Davidson said she’s sad to see such a big hit to the downtown.

“Particularly through this area, there are a lot of really good shops,” she said, gesturing to the rest of the block. “Fonks had some great food.”

For longtime Colfax resident Florence Teatree, the loss of Fonks means losing part of the town’s history.

Teatree moved to Colfax in the early 1950s and remembers sending her kids down to Fonks when it was a five-and-dime.

“Our little kids used to get their quarters in their hand and come down and spend their money,” she said.

“All those historical things are lost now.”

The loss of Fonks also means losing the town’s only sit-down coffee shop.

“Well, that’s another business gone,” Teatree said.

She watched the blaze from her back porch that overlooks downtown.

“When we saw the fire go through the roof, we knew it was gone,” Teatree said. “I wish I hadn’t seen it. I wish it didn’t happen.”

The Warwicks hope to reopen Fonks. Amy Warwick sat with her mother-in-law, Debbie, across from the burned-out building Wednesday morning with tears in her eyes.

“I mean, they’re devastated,” Steve Warwick said of his son and daughter-in-law, who run the business day to day. “It was their heart and soul. I mean, it was their life.”

The family wants the reopening to happen as quickly as possible, even if it’s in a different location.

“It takes a process to get it torn down before you can ever start rebuilding,” Steve Warwick said. “I’d like to get it open somewhere else as quick as we can.”