A large fire swept through a St. Paul food market early Thursday and a man was found dead inside.
About 40 firefighters fought the fire for about 5 hours at Stasny's Food Market at 1053 Western Avenue N., said St. Paul Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard, who said the blaze was put out about 6:30 a.m.
The man who died was an employee of the market, which is well known for its quality meat counter and is popular with neighborhood residents, Zaccard said.
The man's identity has not been released and the medical examiner will determine the cause of death, he said.
Firefighters were called to the scene about 1:30 a.m. after residents who lived in apartments above the market reported smoke. When they arrived, crews found flames shooting out of the windows. The intense fire spread to the basement, and the first floor of the building collapsed, Zaccard said.
Crews found the man in the basement and the market's owners identified him as an employee, Zaccard said.
It was not immediately clear what sparked the fire or why the man was in the basement at that hour. The market was closed when the fire broke out.
"It was ravaging and unsurvivable," Zaccard said.
Tim Schmugge lived on the second floor, above Stasny's Food Market, with his fiancé and two children. Schmugge said they smelled smoke around 1:30 a.m., and he went downstairs and outside to check it out. Peering in the shop's window, he could see smoke.
He ran back upstairs, and he and his fiancée, Eva Tietz, got the two kids, Kayona and Klyde, out. After the children were safely outside, Schmugge and Tietz ran back upstairs to retrieve her purse and the keys to their car.
Those items, and the clothes they were wearing, were all they managed to save, as the fire spread to the second floor.
Among the things they couldn't retrieve was an urn with Tietz's mother's ashes, which they had planned to spread this summer.
"You just don't realize how precious your things are, and your home, until it's gone," said Tietz, 41.
"We didn't want for anything," said Schmugge, 39, who had a Red Cross blanket draped over his shoulders. "We had everything we wanted. Now it's all gone … It's rough. The whole thing is rough."
Tietz and Schmugge said they didn't know there was someone in the basement.
For a while, it looked like the flames had subsided and that the second floor would be damaged only by smoke, Schmugge said. But then the fire flared again, engulfing the upper floor.
Zaccard surmised that the building will be a total loss.
"It's a neighborhood staple," Zaccard said. "People are saddened by the loss of the business."
Generations of families patronized the store.
"My mom used to come here, my stepdaughter used to come here, that's how I was introduced to the place," said Douglas Heyer, 63. "He made the best smoked meat in town."
Others who moved away and came back to St. Paul to visit made it a point to stop by Stasny's, said Curtis Stueber, 49.
"When they moved, they would still come back," he said.
Residents of a nearby house were evacuated as a precaution, Zaccard said.
The St. Paul Fire Department, the state fire marshal and arson investigators will try to determine how the fire started.
Ben Farniok is a student at the University of Minnesota on assignment for the Star Tribune.
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