Fire crews were called to the HomeCo shopping centre yesterday when a sprinkler went off at 7:35am, before shoppers had entered the premises.

The sprinkler located directly above The Sassy Beans coffee machine has inundated owner Tony Zammit's café. 

“I am totally devastated. After two and a half years of Covid, two and a half years of flood recovery, and just when things were getting back to somewhere close to normal, and now this,” Tony Zammit laments.

Firemen arrived at 7.45am, but could not shut off the water until 8am. 5000L of water a minute poured onto Tony’s coffee machine, fridges, and the food he was preparing.

“We weren’t even cooking or anything. The fridges are destroyed, the coffee machine is destroyed. I just can’t believe it.”

Tony was preparing food for the day when the sprinkler went off. 

“I walked under it 50 times that morning, but suddenly I was getting drenched.”

The water spread out in the shopping centre, affecting Repco, BCF and Petstock. Apart from The Sassy Bean, the other businesses weren’t too negatively affected.

Petstock’s Kylie said, “I rocked up to work, and there were fire engines out the front. The carpark was full of water. I didn’t think we were too badly affected until I went inside, and I saw the water coming through the wall from Sassy Bean.”

The water was not sufficient to cause any damage to stock.

(Photo: provided)

Repco cleaned up and was ready to open as soon as possible.

At BCF, Rob said, “We got here in time to pick up low-lying stock and put it up high. Then it was just 5 hours of mopping.”

(Photo: provided)

Eleven firefighters attended from Lismore and Ballina. The fire crews cleaned up until 9:10am and the centre reopened at 11am once all the shops were ready.

Tony does a lot of weekend preparation on Friday evening and Saturday morning. The food on the counters on Saturday morning was ruined, but the food in the fridges was protected. However, it couldn't be kept for long.

(The clean-up. Photo: provided)

Tony hates waste, so he started making enquiries to find a charity that could take the sandwiches and pies.

Sharon Dwyer from the Winsome kitchen was not in Lismore, but was able to coordinate salvaging the food to be handed to those in need. 

(Tony's food on its way to The Winsome. Photo: provided)

Tony now turns to the next steps. He has already made calls to implement a quick temporary setup so people are still able to access the café services, but plans will have to play out over the next few days. What is required to start over needs to be assessed - insurance and costs are undefined, timing is a big hurdle and the effort seems daunting after so much loss.

The Sassy Bean café has been up for sale, and Tony fears that this turn of events will not bode well.  See more details in a recent story here.

HomeCo was contacted for an explanation as to what caused that amount of water to enter the building's main body, but it did not provide a comment at the time of publishing.