WICHITA — Bill Warren claims he isn’t worried about locusts, but perhaps he should be.
His IMAX theater in Moore, Okla. – the same one that was hit by a tornado in May – had a fire Sunday night that did about $10,000 in damage to the theater’s roof.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Warren says. “It could have been a big deal.”
An air vent motor caught fire, he says, though it’s still not clear what caused it.
“We don’t know if maybe the fan got some debris in it from the storm,” Warren says.
He says it could have been electrical damage that didn’t immediately show up.
Whatever it was, Warren says he feels nothing but lucky.
“To be honest with you, I feel very fortunate,” he says.
He knows the tornado hurt other businesses in his immediate area much worse than his.
Warren says he wondered if movie sales would return to what they were before the tornado, but he says even those have been good.
“I never had a theater shut down maybe other than a day of my entire career,” he says.
The theater shut down for eight days.
“I just didn’t know if there would be some lingering effect of people going elsewhere.”
That hasn’t happened, Warren says.
All the way around, he says, “If you think about it, we were lucky.”
So the threat of locusts – or any other natural or man-made disasters – isn’t a concern for Warren.
“Not even close.”