Claremore restaurant owner helping employees out of work due to local building fire

CLAREMORE, Okla. — When Carla Gibson, the owner of Gibby C’s South in your Mouth Scratch Kitchen & Catering in Claremore, got word about the deadly fire at Molly’s Landing, it took her a moment to process.

“Everybody knows Molly’s,” she said. “That’s the place that you go when you want to have an anniversary or a birthday. It’s a special, specialty place.”

As a former employee of Molly’s Landing herself, Gibson knew she just had to help.

“It’s devastating to all of us because then we put ourselves in that position,” she explained. “What would we do? What would we want to happen?”

Fire investigators found one woman dead in the second floor apartment.

“My heart and prayers go out to the family of all involved,” she said. “I told my husband. I said, ‘Should I reach out to them and ask if they want jobs?’ I said, ‘It’s just kind of sensitive in this moment.’ I didn’t want to be intrusive.”

Gibson decided to post on social media.

“I said I’ll just put a Facebook post out there and it’s at free will if they want to come and talk to me, I will talk to them and hire them on the spot if they want it,” she said. “And if they don’t, then that’s up to them.”

By Monday morning, Gibson said that five people who worked at Molly’s Landing had reached out, just weeks before Christmas.

“A lot of the people in this industry, they work paycheck to paycheck, and so, to have one week of pay not in their bank, that’s detrimental to a lot of families,” she explained. “So, we’ll try to fill the gap as much as we can on our side.”

Gibson said if the roles were reverse, she would hope someone would reach out to her employees in the same way. 

For more information on Gibby C’s, click here.

To help those employees who are without work following the fire, click here to donate.