As flurries fell from an orange sky Saturday evening, a Taco Bell restaurant in Albemarle County succumbed to a massive fire that destroyed the building and left a thick haze of smoke over U.S. 29.
“We don’t know anything,” Taco Bell General Manager Tammy Puentes said of the fire’s cause, as she stared at flames shooting out of the building.
Crews responded to calls of a commercial structure fire around 5 p.m. Saturday and found smoke coming out of the fast food restaurant near Albemarle Square shopping center. County Assistant Fire Marshal Melvin R. Bishop said the fire appeared to have originated from the south side of the building, though an exact cause is still under investigation.
Contractors had been working earlier that day to put a red, yellow and green-colored veneer around the building and noticed smoke, Bishop said. Bishop said employees also noticed smoke in the dining room.
“They just lifted up the drop ceiling to see where the smoke was coming from,” he said. Doing so “fed the fire,” he added.
Puentes said all the restaurant’s customers and employees were evacuated, and no injuries were reported. But the building appeared to be unsalvageable — fire had engulfed it, heavy smoke and water damage was visible, and the roof collapsed before firefighters were able to tame the blaze. Firefighters also smashed the building’s windows as they were working to put out the fire.
Fluvanna County resident Tamara Shifflett said she was eating at Applebee’s and heard about the Taco Bell fire, so she walked over to see it.
“This used to be the one I [would] normally go to,” she said.
Traffic on U.S. 29 also slowed in both directions near the restaurant. At one point the smoke rising from the building was so thick that the restaurant was virtually invisible.
“I’m sad,” said Angel Ferrari, a student at Piedmont Virginia Community College and an Albemarle resident. “I don’t even eat there and it’s saddening.”
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