No structural damage after grease fire in White Hall Thursday evening

By Benjamin Cox on September 14, 2018 at 2:36pm

The White Hall Fire Department was called Thursday evening in regards to a fire at a local restaurant.

According to White Hall Fire Chief Gary Sheppard, emergency personnel were on scene within minutes.

Chief Sheppard describes the course of events after 9-1-1 was called.

“We got the alarm at around 7:08 p.m. Thursday. Within three minutes, I had one engine and one crew on scene. At that point, there were no flames showing, but there was heavy smoke everywhere. Some employees of the establishment that sustained what was eventually determined to be a grease fire had actually attempted to put out the flame themselves before emergency personnel had arrived. That did not go well. They entered the building as many as three times to extinguish the fire themselves. They got out of the building and, for whatever reason, the door was locked behind them. So when my first crew got on scene, the entry to the front of the building was locked up. We were able to take care of that, and an ambulance was called for the two employees who had inhaled some smoke. They were both treated on scene and released.”

Chief Sheppard says where specifically in White Hall the fire occurred.

“It was the Main Street Cafe on the north end of town in the 700 block of North Main. It was a grease fire in the kitchen. Evidently, the deep-fat frier did not shut off and got the grease too hot and it caught on fire. There was no structural damage resulting from the fire, however the building did suffer some effects from smoke and the powder from all the fire extinguishers. Roodhouse and White Hall police assisted with redirecting traffic, which was a vital necessity in this case because it was on Main Street.”

A representative of the Main Street Cafe in White Hall says that the restaurant staff are hoping to reopen the doors next week.