An early morning blaze Sunday that destroyed a beloved café and bakery in London’s Wortley Village has been deemed suspicious by city police, with the café’s owners saying the fire is believed to have begun outside, behind the building.
Emergency crews responded to the scene at 134 Wortley Rd. around 1:30 a.m. Sunday for a reported structure fire, and at the scene found heavy smoke and flames coming from the building housing Black Walnut Bakery Café.
The stubborn blaze kept firefighters busy into the afternoon, resulting in the ultimate loss of the building after a large portion of the roof gave way, according to fire officials.
By Sunday afternoon, workers had demolished all that was left of the building, and Wortley Village residents were mourning the loss of a local institution that had operated in the neighbourhood since 2011.
“(Crews) went offensive to attack the fire and conducted search and rescue operations in case there were occupants in the building. Thankfully, there were none,” Kirk Loveland, platoon chief, recalled to Global News on Monday.
“Unfortunately later on into the fire, it broke through the roof, and it was too dangerous to keep firefighters inside the building, so we had to evacuate them out and try to extinguish the fire from the exterior,” he said.
“We were using aerial towers to try to get at the fire and… try to open up the roof, so we get at the fire. But, the structure was starting to collapse in on itself, and then it became just too dangerous for the firefighters or citizens or anyone around, and the fire continued to grow.”
Given the extent of the damage, Loveland says the decision was made to pull the rest of the building down so fire crews could douse hot spots.
“Fencing was put up to protect the area, but even this morning, during the night, there was still some smouldering, (and) crews had to go back,” he said.
A damage estimate has been pegged $2 million.
On Monday, police revealed that the matter had been turned over to members of their street crime unit, who were investigating the incident as suspicious with assistance from the fire department.
Speaking with Global News on Monday, Black Walnut’s sibling owners, Ed and Mandy Etheridge, said it came as a shock that police were probing the fire as being suspicious in nature.
“Every hour since this has happened, all we think about is rebuilding and serving our community again. That’s what we’ve done for 12 years every single day, and we won’t give up on that,” said Mandy Etheridge.
“The faster we can get back to serving is the route that we’re taking. We’re trying to rebuild as much of the original back as we can. We want it to honour what we had before and take that kind of history into the new building.”
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Police and fire officials have not said how and where the fire is believed to have started, however Ed Etheridge said fire crews at the scene relayed to them that the blaze may have started outside at the rear of the building on the northeast corner, where it then spread inside.
“I was there on scene within minutes when we got a call from the security company. When I arrived, they were fighting it in one area… so it was clear that that’s where the origin was or where the main part was,” he said.
“When we did the tear down, we looked at room to room — well they did as the experts, but I was standing along with them — just to check to see if there (were) any other signs of an origin point. Every other room was clear, and there was no sign of that as far as we saw and were told.”
It’s not clear yet if the fire was started intentionally, however Ed and Mandy noted multiple cases of vandalism in recent years involving Black Walnut and other Wortley Village businesses, including an incident where the café’s cash registers were stolen.
Both also recalled past instances where strangers had been encountered at the back of the building, “doing all sorts of things back there,” Mandy said.
“Including starting fires,” Ed added.
“We came across a gentleman who was actually starting a fire in that same area several months ago, and when we approached him to ask him what he was doing, he chased us with a screwdriver,” he said.
Police were contacted, however the man fled before officers arrived, Mandy says.
In a stroke of luck, Ed says they were able to locate the hard drive for the shop’s security camera system in the rubble on Sunday, which is now in the hands of police.
“We were really lucky enough to find it. It’s in rough shape, obviously water damage and smoke and such, but we’re hoping that their forensics team are able to get information off it.”
No injuries were reported in the early morning blaze, including to firefighters, and no one was inside the 145-year-old building, which has been owned by the Etheridge family since June 2011.
The occupant of the building’s second-floor apartment, Ed and Mandy’s father, was out of town on vacation when the fire broke out.
“He raced back from his vacation, driving seven straight hours home, so he could be there as quick as he (could) to see what was going on and help where he could,” Ed said.
Along with his home and the family business, Mandy says all of his belongings, as well as the sibling’s childhood memories, were also lost to the flames.
Twenty staff members of the café have also been impacted. Ed says the plan is to get as many of them employed at Black Walnut’s two other locations as they can.
A second Black Walnut store opened at the corner of Richmond and Piccadilly streets in September 2015, and a smaller satellite location opened earlier this year at Western’s Discovery Park.
“The outpouring of support has been absolutely inspiring… We thank everybody for their warm wishes and all their offers of support, and to the Wortley businesses to support us, we’re going to be forever grateful,” Ed said.
Both also said they wished to extend thanks to the emergency crews who responded to the scene, and to their next door neighbours who were the first to notice the fire.
“Wortley’s such a great neighbourhood to be in, and the neighbours are so great, and so I want to thank them for making that phone call, first phone call to the fire department,” Mandy said.
Anyone with information can contact police or Crime Stoppers.
— with files from Kelly Wang, Sawyer Bogdan, Scott Monich
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