Oscar’s fire

Feel free to move this topic, I wasn’t sure where to Put it under. Anyways, my favorite burger joint burnt down last night. Its name was Oscar’s, And ever since I moved to the city, we had went to there at least once every two weeks. The building was built in 1991. The cause of the fire is still not determined, And they said it’s a complete loss. According to fire reports, After all the employees left at about 12 last night, A fire broke out inside the building. The fire quickly spread to the roof and engulf the entire roof section. There Was no fire alarm system Inside the building, in the building was not sprinkled. I always was kind of curious why this building had no fire protection, and its occupancy was about 50. Looking back in pictures, it looks like there were suppression systems for the grills, But that’s it. It’s kind of unbelievable as I said, that’s this building. Had no sprinklers or fire alarms at all. The building did have exit signage, but that didn’t help in the Situation, because the building was vacant, because it was closed. My current place of work, that is a restaurant, has an occupancy of 35 And the entire building is Sprinkled, And has a Potter FACP Sprinkler monitoring panel. According to the fire officials, seven other departments had to provide mutual aid and the fire took 90 minutes to put out. The fire officials knew there was a fire because a pastor by called 911. By that point, it was probably too late. The building was sprinkler and had a alarm system, the fire department could’ve been notified right when the fire broke out and maybe the building wouldn’t have completely burned down. It’s really unfortunate that this happened, And I hope they rebuild.

I attached some pictures, To show the extent of the damage.
Before:







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IMG_6258|379x499

Last picture I took a week ago:

Damage:





This could easily happen in my area. I would say that almost all of the restaurants that were not built in the last 15 years have no fire protection whatsoever. My area also really likes to grandfather old buildings. There are even some newer restaurants in my area that are on the smaller side that have no protection. The only fast-food restaurant that I can think of that has an FA system is my local Culver’s which opened in 2018 with a Potter system. The neighboring town had a Culver’s open in 2021, but it has no fire protection.

Overall, it’s just a classic case of why grandfathering is not usually a good thing and why fire protection is extremely important for the safety of both people and property.

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I’ve seen way too many buildings without fire alarms, however many of them have sprinklers. When the building both have no fire alarm system and no sprinklers, you create a dangerous possibility of a fire going unnoticed. The city’s codes have to stop allowing these buildings to remain open to the public without a fire alarm system or sprinkler system because they weren’t built with one. An apartment complex somewhat near my hand had a fire, unfortunately 2 people passed away as they didn’t know about the fire before it was too late to escape. From what I know the only form of fire protection were residential smoke alarms. Which may not even be installed or functional in the apartment buildings.

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