Students who take their laundry to Flip Laundry Services are going to have to find somewhere else to get it cleaned for now.
Bloomington Fire Department responded Friday morning to a fire at the laundromat and dry cleaning business. The business suffered extensive damage, but no one was injured, BFD Sgt. Brandon Hudson said.
Foul play is not suspected in the incident, Hudson said.
BFD won’t disclose the source of the fire until the investigation is done.
Hudson said 28 firefighters responded around 6:30 a.m. Friday. Fire crews left around noon.
Cold temperatures froze a nearby fire hydrant so firefighters had to use water stored in the fire truck.
Owner Jim Keplinger said about 70 percent of Flip Laundry Services customers are students. The business was also managing the laundry in the IU mold remediation process.
“We did manage to recover and actually save quite a bit of the mold remediation students' laundry,” Keplinger said.
He said the day before the fire, they had sent most of the student’s laundry to a partner plant, so it wasn’t there when the fire happened.
Also, most of the dry cleaned clothes only had smoke damage, which is going to be cleaned by the partner plant and returned to customers, Keplinger said.
Keplinger said he is staying positive and hopes to rebuild and reopen soon. He said he thinks it will take several months.
“We know the community relies on us, and we want to return better than ever,” he said. “We’re just really relieved it was just stuff that was damaged.”
