This fire Saturday morning destroyed the Marco Restaurant in Ste. Anne de Bellevue (Montreal area). News reports indicate the fire started in the basement and was discovered around 7:45 AM.
No injuries were reported.
Anne Sutherland, a reporter with The Gazette, interviewed Ste. Anne de Bellevue Mayor Bill Tierney and Montreal Fire Department chief of operations Michel Gareau. Here are excerpts:
“I got a call at 8 a.m. and by the time I got here at 8:10 a.m., there was a lot of smoke and then the flames burst out,” the mayor said as he watched from Cunningham’s restaurant across the street. “It was very dramatic.” A pile of rubble from a collapsed wall covered the gas valve, complicating matters, said Montreal Fire Department chief of operations Michel Gareau.
A gas leak and a burning fire are a dangerous combination, and Gareau cleared everyone out until the leak could be capped.
“We couldn’t close the valve so we had to dig down and find the pipe to shut it off, and in doing so we broke the gas main,” Gareau said.
A before picture of Marco Restaurant. Click the image for the Google Maps Street View tour of the neighborhood.
The restaurant occupied the basement and the first floor of the two-storey brick building. No one was on the premises when the blaze broke out.
Quick work by firefighters saved the adjacent building, a pharmacy, which sustained only smoke and water damage. “In this case, a fire wall did its job and stopped the fire,” Tierney said.
