Hollywood Broadwalk Businesses Damaged In Fire
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Four restaurants were damaged after a fire broke out on the popular Hollywood Broadwalk.
It happened in the 900 block of N Broadwalk, just south of the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort.
The fire swept through restaurants whose owners have been struggling to rebound from the economic impact of the pandemic.
Among the four restaurants damaged were the Little Venice pizza place and the Hollywood Grill.
Hollywood Fire Rescue said they received a call shortly before 5 a.m. that businesses were on fire on the Broadwalk. They said crews were able to put out the flames in about 15 minutes.
"It looks pretty bad. We don't know how much damage we've got from the roof to the electrical," said "Jorge" whose family owns one of the restaurants. "So far it looks okay. We haven't been allowed to go back in there. We really don't know, everything is still under investigation."
Jorge said this couldn't have happened at a worse time.
"After the whole COVID thing we picked up, the business actually started picking up and now this, so you know it's weird. Just when we started looking good, everything started getting back to normal, or whatever we call normal these days, then this happens. My heart goes out to all the owners because this really sucks, especially after coming back after corona, it's just one thing after the next," he said.
Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy said they plan to move quickly to make the area safe once given the all-clear.
"Clearly this is a situation where the city is going to be very interested in working with the business owners to speed up the recovery, to make sure this gets cleaned up, boarded up, and made safe. The Broadwalk is a busy area so as soon as the fire department and fire marshals give us the all-clear we'll be able to clean the scene and have people walk safely by here and at the same time board up these buildings and then wait on insurance, and wait on the property owners to rebuild," said Levy.
The recovery could be a big challenge for some of the business owners, depending on the amount of insurance they have.
There were no injuries reported and what sparked it is under investigation.
