news-record.com

Local businesswoman Angie Stallings spent Saturday sorting through the rubble of her family’s closed shipping company as fire investigators remained unsure of the cause of a fire that gutted it a day earlier.

Transportation Systems Inc., better known as TSI, closed in December. But Stallings still had office furniture, some inventory and personal items in the warehouse beside the railroad tracks on Tipton Place, just off West Lee Street near downtown.

“You try to file what you can with the insurance company,” she said. “That’s all you can do.”

Meanwhile, Greensboro police said they had detained two men for questioning immediately after the fire but had not filed charges.
They identified the men as Fred Tensley Smith, 54, and Wayne Edward Goff, 40. No address was given for either man.

Witnesses reported seeing several homeless men leaving the area about the time the building at 302 Tipton erupted. Firefighters were called to the scene just before 5 p.m., and arrived to find it fully ablaze.

Fire inspectors had nothing new to report Saturday. They will resume the investigation Monday, said Assistant Fire Chief David Douglas.

Firefighters returned to the site several times Saturday to put out small fires that reignited in the warehouse, Stallings said.

She had been able to salvage little from the rubble, she said. She did not have a detailed estimate, but said TSI lost at least $30,000 in the blaze.

Overnight, thieves stole about $9,000 worth of “dock boards,” specialized planks used to load and unload trucks, Stallings said.
TSI has leased the building for years from Norfolk Southern, she said. The company closed in December after more than 30 years in the business of shipping furniture cross-country by rail and truck.

High fuel prices and fierce competition sank TSI last year, Stallings said.

In 1980, a group of auxiliary firefighters set fire to a building TSI leased in High Point, an act of arson for which they later were punished, she said.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com