Town premises ‘closed for some time’ after fire

Internal structures of Red had to be broken down as firefighters tackled a blaze from inside the building which spread through the restaurant.

All three emergency services were called to the seafront in St Peter Port at around 7pm on Tuesday after a 999 call about a fire in Red, which spread through to the sister restaurant behind, Tinto.

In an update following the fire, the Red Grill House posted a statement on Facebook which said: ‘Well, a tough night in our small group of places of food and drink.

‘The only problem with having the three so close together is that when one hurts, they all hurt.

‘It looks like Red and Tinto are out of action for a while, but hopefully Rosso might be spinning doughs of delight by the weekend.’

They said that the great thing was nobody was hurt.

Traffic was diverted away from the area by Guernsey Police who contacted colleagues at civil protection to assist at 8pm.

A civil protection officer said when the team arrived there was still lots of smoke coming out the top of the building.

'We closed the road from Crown Pier to the roundabout but the back road [Le Pollet] was completely covered in smoke.'

‘Thanks so much to everyone for their kind messages, the staff for their great professionalism and the Fire Service for being amazing. We’ll Be Back.’

Station officer Steve Wilkes was the duty fire officer at the incident and said his crew were called to an incident where smoke was coming from the kitchen area of Red restaurant.

‘The smoke spread into Tinto’s restaurant – it was basically the two kitchens back-to-back.

‘It had been quite hard finding the seat of the fire as the fire spread so we’ve had to cut away a lot of the building construction to get to the root of the fire.’

He said the damage caused to the restaurant meant the establishment would not be open to the public ‘for a while’.

Two water appliances were called initially with nine personnel. This extended to 16 firefighters on the fire ground.

‘With old buildings there’s a lot of hidden voids so the main challenge has been pinpointing the seat of the fire.’

At the time it was not clear what the cause of the fire was but a full investigation will take place.

Traffic was diverted away from the area by Guernsey Police, who contacted colleagues at civil protection to assist at 8pm.

A civil protection officer said when the team arrived there was still lots of smoke coming out the top of the building.

‘We closed the road from Crown Pier to the roundabout but the back road [Le Pollet] was completely covered in smoke.’

Commenting on the amount of smoke coming from the building, he said in his experience it was not unusual for a building to continue smoking for hours and hours after the actual fire had been extinguished.

One woman who was dining at Red last night said she was having her starter when the waiter came over with his coat on and said they had to evacuate because there was a fire.

‘There was a bit of smoke in the restaurant but much more in the room above,’ she said.

Guernsey Fire & Rescue left the scene just before 7.30am yesterday [Wed 22 Jan] and will be returning later on to carry out further checks to the building.