ASHFORD, CT (WFSB) – Crews are investigating a fire at an Ashford restaurant.
Officials said it started late Saturday night at the Midway Restaurant on Ashford Center Road.
“We gonna build back everything. We gonna clean up everything,” said Co-Owner Sunny Singh.
Singh was getting ready to celebrate five years owning the restaurant.
“We have regular people come in here have a beer, truckers come here bikers come here,” said Singh.
But the only people going inside Sunday are firefighters and investigators.
“I went home at 10:30. I close the restaurant,” said Singh.
An hour later, someone drove by and saw the restaurant on fire.
Fire officials said people were smoking out on the deck.
The fire marshal believes that someone may have thrown a hot cigarette into a plastic receptacle with cigarette packaging and wrappers nearby.
That caught on fire and it spread, damaging the roof. Part of the roof caved in.
Damage even spread to the other side of the building.
“It’s a good mess a lot of water damage,” said Chief Paul Varga with the Ashford Fire Department.
Nobody was inside.
Fire Marshal Charlie Sweetland believes that cigarette could’ve been hot for hours before it caught on the plastic and cigarette packaging.
“The thing is it just sits there and smolders and once it starts building more heat and getting more heat and other stuff involved and then it just expands on its own,” said Sweetland.
Singh is determined. He wants to fix up the restaurant and make it better for Ashford.
People are counting on him.
“It’s a really popular place you know,” said Singh.
“It’s the only bar left in town. It’s a very popular spot so now we don’t have one,” Varga said.
Ashford restaurant fire under investigation
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https://www.wfsb.com/2022/08/21/ashford-restaurant-fire-under-investigation/