Bar burned down!!!

There's a café in my hometown (population 4.000), where I go since almost 25 years, it's my absolute favorite bar. At the time, talking about 5-6 years ago, it was owned by good friend's of mine, and in the end, the had 100 different sorts of beer, and 150(!) different sorts of whiskey. Unfortunately after many years, they got divorced, and had to stop the business.

Then for several years, it changed the owner quite many times (only foreigners), and it was not anymore what it was before, completely lost the atmosphere, and the spirit, as those people tried to make something on their own, that had nothing to do anymore with the basic concept, and nobody went there anymore, and obviously, they all failed.

So since almost 2 years now, finally again a luxembourgish person (meanwhile a good friend of mine) took over the bar, and it started again to be what it was, the look was again the same, more and more beers and whiskeys started to appear, and all of my friend's went there again, almost every day was full house.

But during this night, happened what is the worst that can happen to any bar, even more if it's from 1911, there was a fire, and the whole thing burnt down!!! I saw it in the news this morning, and I was completely stunned. Apparently it was due to a technical fault, but I guess they will investigate this further. No people were hurt, which is always the most important.

Also so many memories, like pictures, old furniture, an old huge painting specially done for this bar over decades ago, the self designed counter with the 10 combined draughts, 50 year old telephone and cash... all that stuff, just gone.

I'm really sad about this, as our town is already not the biggest, and good bars started to be rare here, so we have wait and see what will happen now.

Here's the news from the paper with some pictures:

Quote:

The owner of a bistro in Rumelange was woken up in the early hours of Thursday morning by noises coming from the café below.

When he got up to investigate, dense black smoke and flames coming from the restaurant confronted him. Emergency services we immediately called.

Firefighters and police quickly arrived at the scene at “Café du Coin” on Grand Rue, and smoke could be seen billowing from the building along with fire inside the restaurant.

Four residents in the building at the time were evacuated for safety reasons as firefighters brought the blaze under control and extinguished it.

Nobody was harmed in the incident and the residents were housed in temporary accommodation by the Rumelange Commune.

Luckily the fire was extinguished before reaching adjacent buildings, although the café was completely destroyed by the fire.

After initial investigation it is believed that a technical fault was to blame for sparking the fire.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...pseca183f0.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...s8337f5b4.jpeg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...s9fa21cc8.jpeg

That is a real shame for such an old building. Looking at the pictures it looks like the fire fighters got it under control before structural damage happened, meaning only superficial fire damage and it should be restored fairly quickly with a rip out and refit. The saddest thing with old buildings is that fires destroy original features of the building and they can't be restored.

Sad news. Not good to see something that we went so many times to be destroyed.
Most important was that nobody was hurt. Technical fault? Short circuit?

Everything is burned down, but the icecream container still has the red color. Didn't know that the "OLA" brand was in your country (Wall's in UK?).
It's very popular in Portugal, and i think it is only in Portugal,Holland and Belgium, other countries have the same brand but with different names.

At least no one was hurt. :)