The owner of the On Time BBQ food trailer, which caught fire on the morning of July 4, said the wheels are in motion for a replacement to be delivered by the end of August, allowing the business to finish out the summer festival season.
“We truly believe we’ll be back by then,” Isreal Torres told the Hendersonian in a phone interview. “Everything is on the up and up.”
Torres said he had backed his food trailer into his O’Byrne Street driveway after working the downtown Henderson Independence Day celebration on the night of July 3.
When he woke at about 4:30 on Saturday morning, Torres drank his coffee and then came outside to get his business prepared to go to Owensboro later in the day. He said he saw white smoke coming out of the food truck. He ran inside to wake up and alert his wife, Mariska, and to get the keys to the truck.
He ran back out and opened the back door of the food trailer, where he found the fire extinguishers kept about two feet from the back door. The first he used was a powder that decreases the oxygen in the fire, and when that didn’t work, he said he used the second, which also didn’t work.
Torres said he was also worried about his house and the neighbor’s house because the location where the vehicle was parked is close to both residences.
He ran to his neighbors’ house and banged on the door to let them know and then got into his pickup truck to pull the food trailer away from the houses.
“It was really, really hectic,” he said.
He said, though, that after the Henderson Fire Department arrived on the scene, firefighters quickly extinguished the fire.
He said the source of the fire was a radio that he uses every day in the food trailer.
Torres said he has a new food trailer on order which will take about five weeks to be delivered. After that, he’ll need to get the vehicle up to local codes, he said.
He hopes to be back serving barbecue at two events in Owensboro and the Morganfield Corn Festival in late September. At that time, he and Mariska also hope to be back in their familiar spot in the parking lot next to the Green Street Dollar Tree on Fridays and Saturdays.
“It was a bad morning, but we made it out,” Isreal said.
