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William C. Franks Furniture was a staple of the Wayne neighborhood, and its owner, Paul Franks, is well-known and loved.

Pulled from the wreckage of the business he inherited from his father, Franks remained in the University of Michigan trauma center in Ann Arbor on Wednesday night, though his condition — earlier listed as critical — had been changed to serious but stable, according to a family statement.

Wednesday evening, the body of a 64-year-old store salesman who lived in Westland was recovered.

Hours later, the search came to a tragic end when the body of another employee, a woman, was found.

A man on fire

Howard Stuedemann, 56, was in the hardware store across the street from Franks Furniture when it exploded around 9 a.m., just after it opened for the day. He ran outside to mayhem and confusion. A man who was pulled from the building was on fire and covered in rubble.

“He was screaming and yelling,” Stuedemann said.

That man likely was Franks, and, according to Wayne city officials, he alerted emergency crews to people who might be inside.

Firefighters, police, emergency search crews and the Department of Homeland Security responded to the scene within minutes. They came from Inkster, Garden City, Canton, Farmington Hills, Taylor, Romulus and Dearborn Heights.

Search and rescue teams came from Oakland and Washtenaw counties.

As the day wore on, searchers dug gingerly through the rubble, bringing out piles a little at a time for dogs to sniff. City Manager John Zech said rescue crews had to approach the search carefully, in case of further collapse. Wayne Deputy Chief/Fire Marshal Shawn Bell said rescuers were hoping to find signs of life in crevices and gaps created by debris landing at angles.

“It’s a very slow and tedious process,” Bell said. “A lot of the debris removal is being done by hand.”

Fire Chief Mel Moore said the search had been complicated by the weight of the building’s concrete roof trusses. The search for the second victim would continue without a break through the night, Moore said.