After a 3:30 a.m. fire on Thursday June 20 devastated two staple downtown shops and left some neighboring business owners without power and customers, the Madison business community is rallying to help keep fire responders—and each other—afloat.

The fire destroyed Village Pizza and the Madison Wine Shop; the cause is still unknown according to Madison Police Officer Joseph Race. The Madison Police Department has closed the northbound lane of Route 1, using the southbound lane for traffic in both directions.

In addition to the traffic disruptions, some of the shops on the south side of Route One are temporarily without power.

Jennifer Bella, owner of outage victim The Modern Dog, said she can remain open "a few days I'd say. I do have a freezer, so if I don't have power back tomorrow I'll need to get a generator and plug that in. That's my biggest concern-the food.

"It'll definitely hurt business," she noted.

Other businesses such as Willoughby's Coffee and The Country Shop remain closed.

Doug Jones, owner of Sweet Smyles, seemed optimistic about the possibility of opening today saying, "They're saying we'll have power back by 4 o'clock. We'll probably open two hours after."

Jones has been trying to make the most of the situation by donating frozen yogurt to the first responders still on site.

Among those businesses who have helped first responders is the Madison Coffee Shop, which donated 100 sandwiches; the Guilford Savings Bank, which provided energy drinks; and Cumberland Farms, which gave out coffee and donuts.

Although Attitude Plus-which is situated directly behind the building where the fire took place-did not sustain any damage, owner Jill Lufsey says the support from other business owners has been outstanding.

"The merchants in this town are phenomenal. They knew my store-where it was located-and called and asked me, 'Do you need help? Do you need help moving clothes out? Do you need any kind of assistance, storage, anything?' because they did know if there was any smoke damage," said Lufsey. "They pulled together as a family. This is definitely a wonderful town to have a business in, everybody has been wonderful."

And it's the business community that is coming together to assist Village Pizza and the Madison Wine Shop, the two businesses that were destroyed in the blaze.

Janet Connolly, president of the Board of Directors for the Madison Chamber of Commerce, said that the chamber is looking for temporary locations for both businesses to relocate over the next few weeks.l

"We're trying to help them reelocate. It's very, very early in the whole event and we're trying to listen and see what they need," Connolly said. "We are looking for new temporary locations until the site would be secured and then rebuilt. That’s going to take time so I don’t know if it’s going to be six months or a year down the road."

Eileen Banisch, executive director of the Madison Chamber of Commerce, said she hopes to be able to find new spaces for Village Pizza and the Madison Wine Shop within the month.

For now, however, Connolly said the Chamber of Commerece is looking for ways to help both businesses overcome the loss of income and help the employees.

“This kind of puts everything in to perspective," Banisch said. "It’s a shame. Both of these places have been in businesses in downtown Madison for decades. They are staples of downtown Madison."”