Retired Firefighter Helps Evacuate as Blaze Damages McHenry Sourdough Bakery

A major fire breaks out around midday Sunday in downtown McHenry, severely damaging the long-running Riverside Bake Shop and causing collateral damage to neighboring Reese’s Barkery & Pawtique. A retired firefighter passing by assisted with evacuating people from the bakery before first responders arrived, potentially preventing greater injury.

Fire crews from multiple departments responded with an extra-alarm response as crews battled flames in cold, icy conditions that complicated hose lines and footing. One firefighter was evaluated, treated for minor injuries and released. Emergency crews remained on scene into the afternoon as they checked for hot spots and assessed structural damage.

Riverside Bake Shop is a multi-decade neighborhood bakery known to local sourdough bakers for its crusty loaves and starter-driven methods. The owners posted a message on social media thanking the community for support and promising updates as they learn more about the scope of the damage. Neighbors and customers are already organizing informal offers of help, and a broader community fundraising and recovery response is expected in the coming days.

For local bakers and regular customers, the immediate impact is practical: fewer options for grab-and-go sourdough, lost weekend specials and potential interruption to orders and wholesale relationships. The loss of a long-running brick-and-mortar bakery also risks the loss of recipes, husbandry of the house starter and hands-on mentoring that a neighborhood bake shop provides to new bakers. Community bakers can help preserve that knowledge by sharing starter culture, hosting bake-alongs, and offering bench space for small pop-up sales while a permanent recovery plan takes shape.

Check Riverside Bake Shop’s social media channels for the latest status on the bakery’s reopening, donation requests and planned fundraisers. If you plan to help financially, wait for an official appeal from the owners or a recognized community group to ensure donations go directly to recovery efforts. In the meantime, support neighboring small food businesses such as Reese’s Barkery & Pawtique, which also suffered damage and may need customers to help stabilize cash flow.

This incident is a reminder of how quickly a neighborhood bread source can be threatened and how vital local networks are to recover. Expect community-organized efforts to rise in the next days and weeks, with bakers and patrons likely collaborating to keep loaves on local tables and to preserve the starter traditions that make McHenry’s sourdough scene resilient.