Fire At Palm Springs Car Auction House Ruled Arson

PALM SPRINGS – Investigators with the Palm Springs Fire Department have determined that the blaze that damaged McCormick’s Exotic Car Auction was intentionally set.

Major clean up is now underway. Friday evening a fire destroyed the company’s main building and several cars causing about $400,000 in damage.

“I was up all night planning this. Trying to figure out how we can get up and running,” says Keith McCormick, owner of McCormick’s Exotic Car Auction.

Plans and hard work are proving more powerful than the fire. Despite its destruction, it’s not stopping business.

“We’ve got people answering phones, so we are up and running,” says McCormick.

Despite all of this damage to McCormicks main building, owners say they are fortunate.

Just steps away from the old building, is a vacant building. The landlord is allowing the owners use the building until the old one is fixed up.

“We had to rip everything out that was salvageable and take it over to the temporary building,” says McCormick.

On Saturday, McCormick got to work early. He began moving computers, keys, boxes and cars into the temporary location.

“We had the phone people here, they connected the phones,” says McCormick. “We had the electricity hooked up and the water people are on their way. We should be operating by Monday.”

However, for the owners of the charred cars, it’s a different story. They still don’t know about the fire or their cars.

“Some of the owners are out of the country or the state,” says McCormick. “We will begin notifying them next week and then we will deal with the aftermath of that.”

For now, McCormick is just trying to rise above the ashes.

“This is one of those blows in life and you just deal with it,” says McCormick.

McCormick is currently planning his next upcoming auction in February. He says the fire shouldn’t hurt the event or future business.