Cameron pool maker rebounding from fire damage

A fire during the early morning hours of July 28 at Hatteras Pools near Cameron destroyed a main building at the Airport Lane business, but it has been able to bounce back and is expected to fully rebound in time.

“We will get back on our feet,” Plant Manger Jeff Tanner said. “We are having to build new molds, new frames. It burned up nine molds. One of those molds is over 70 grand a piece.”

Tanner said it takes three months to build a fiberglass mold. The business still has molds that can be used.

“It put skids on a lot of things, but we will battle back,” Tanner said. “You give us another four weeks.”

“We are not planning on closing down,” Tanner said. “We are planning on putting another building over there and continuing on doing what we have always done.”

“We can build just as many pools with what we got here as we did with the main building, but it was so much nicer to have a big tall building like that,” Tanner said, noting the business will utilize its other sheds to build the pools for the time being. “We have just swapped stuff around.”

The building destroyed in the fire housed Hatteras office and bathroom space, equipment and chemicals.

“Everything got burned up,” he said. “We lost all our equipment and all our materials. It took us a month to get materials back and equipment to build with because everything was in the main shop.”

He estimates at least $1 million in equipment was destroyed in the fire.

The business employs about 17.

The business has a Charlotte location that serves as a retail installation. The Cameron location is the manufacturing site.

The fire was put out by the Fort Motte Volunteer Fire Department. A number of fire departments came to the scene, including Midway, Cameron, Jamison, St. Matthews, Providence and Santee.

Tanner said the cause of the fire is believed to have been accidental.

According to its website, Hattaras has over 25 years of experience manufacturing and installing in-ground fiberglass pools.