Carpet Court on Comur Street in Yass is open for business - which is pretty amazing since it was right next door to the devastating blaze which destroyed the Commercial Hotel.
The two buildings have an adjoining wall. On one side, charcoal and ashes; on the other, business and life goes on.
The people in the shop thanked the firefighters for the "amazing" way they kept the two apart.
On Tuesday, after the fire on Monday morning, staff were in the carpet shop clearing up a bit of water damage and removing samples tainted by smoke.
But open they were.
"It was amazing to put out a fire like that with so much heat," shop assistant Alison Schulze said. "It's just amazing."
Her boss, shop manager Haylee Blyss-Hewett, was equally grateful: "The firies saved a street of shops. I think they were amazing."
The Commercial Hotel had been empty and run-down since last drinks were served in 2005, 170 years or so after the first beer was poured (and no doubt downed by a thirsty traveller on what was then a main highway in colonial New South Wales).
After closure, windows and doors were boarded up. The grand verandah was recently torn down as unsafe.
Fireproof it wasn't, with its rotting timber and wood throughout.
The firefighters were self-effacing about their heroism - not a word they used. They were humble: it was just a hard job to be done.
They got the call at about 2am on Monday. "We were met with a very aggressive fire, and we were confronted with the risk of it spreading to the shops," Scott Lang, captain of NSW Fire and Rescue in Yass said.
It was so aggressive the roof and the first floor collapsed an hour later.
"There was a huge noise. It was like an earthquake, a rumble and the whole lot came down," one firefighter said.
The crews who attended were from Yass, Boorowa, Harden, Queanbeyan and Young. Reinforcements arrived from the ACT and the Rural Fire Service.
But the big break was to call in an aerial pump from Wagga Wagga so the fire could be attacked from above and below. But that took an inevitable two hours to make the journey.
"We also deployed a drone and that provided us with aerial shots. It gave us a bird's eye view," fire captain Lang said.
The drone also had thermal imagining so it could show the hottest parts of the blaze in live pictures to the crews.
"The drone technology is new to firefighting, and it offered us the ability to adapt our strategy."
The third bit of clever technology was a Compressed Air Foam System Tanker which directed foam into the blaze.
And the fourth big initiative was a bit of planning by the fire brigade. They do regular tours of local streets and buildings to assess hazards and how they might deal with them.
"Every year, we do analysis of our major hazards. This pre-incident planning had been done and that included the Commercial Hotel," the fire captain said.
One risk was that firefighters would be too brave.
Dean Campbell, who arrived from Goulburn to take command, said he had to make sure that fire crews stayed well clear even though nobody knew for sure that there was nobody in the building.
Firefighters couldn't enter the building because of its rickety nature. "My job is to protect them because their natural instinct is to get close to the building," he said.
The result is a surviving street of shops.
A 20-year-old man from Comur Street has been charged with causing the fire.
We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.
