magine waking up at 1 a.m. to discover your business property engulfed in flames. That was the devastating March 6 reality experienced by Joshua Bulk, co-owner of Rosa Flora Limited in Dunnville, ON, one of North America’s larger cut flower operations with over 1.6 million square feet of growing space and between 150 to 200 employees.

The fire wiped out 15 of the company’s 40 acres of property, amounting to roughly 30 percent of its production, and causing well over $10 million in damage. In addition to losing greenhouses, a dozen delivery trucks, sales and administrative offices and a cooler facility were destroyed.

Bulk said the fire marshal and the insurance investigators could not determine the cause of the fire. “We would love to know the answer so we can prevent this from happening again,” he said.

Rosa Flora, established in 1978 by Joshua’s parents, Otto and Corine Bulk, is one of the larger gerbera growers in North America. It also grows snapdragons, lisianthus, alstroemeria, stephanotis, anthurium and lilies. It lost 500,000 square feet of snapdragons, 200,000 square feet of gerberas and 100,000 square feet of warehouse and office space in the blaze.

A cousin of Otto Bulk, who also grows snapdragons, decided to retire and sell his business, Peter Bulk Greenhouses, a 90,000 square-foot operation, to Joshua Bulk and his co-owning sister and brother-in-law, Arielle and Ralph DeBoer. The new acquisition enabled Rosa Flora to resume filling snapdragon orders less than three weeks after the fire, but only returned the company to 20 percent of its original production, added Bulk.

“We have begun planting our new snaps where the fire did the least damage, and construction has begun on the new greenhouses,” Bulk said. “Our main priority is getting snapdragons back in the ground for our customers.”

Rosa Flora had also developed its own fleet of custom-fitted tractor-trailer and delivery trucks so it could ship flowers throughout Canada and the northeastern United States in water to keep them fresh, until the fire destroyed 13 of its 15 trucks. About 70 percent of Rosa Flora’s customers are in the United States and Bulk attributes customer satisfaction with its flowers and service to that fleet of trucks.

Bulk said he is renting and borrowing trucks and awaiting the arrival of some new trucks, in addition to meeting loading challenges. “We are able to load out of only one dock since we lost 23 in the fire, so our loading has become very streamlined,” said Bulk.

Cleanup and rebuilding are under way and Bulk hopes to have production back to 70 percent by the end of June.

“Due to the vast size of the operations lost, we are working to get back our space as quickly as possible,” Bulk said. “Unfortunately, we will not be able to get it all back this calendar year, so the reconstruction will have to occur over the next year as well, but we want to be shipping out of our new facility by October of this year.”

Bulk expressed his gratitude for all the support and assistance he has received since the fire and said, “We are looking forward to growing our business back to its potential, and beyond.”