A firefighter uses a chainsaw to cut a hole into the north side of a Perrysburg restaurant that caught fire Thursday afternoon. Visit www.sent-trib.com to watch a video.
J.D. Pooley | Sentinel-Tribune
PERRYSBURG — A manager and workers escaped a city restaurant that went up in flames Thursday afternoon.
Perrysburg Fire Chief Rudy Ruiz said crews were called to Social Gastropub on Ohio 25 around 2 p.m. Multiple 911 calls were received.
“By the time we got here, we already started seeing flames,” he said. “Once it got inside (the building) it really took off.”
They got crews and lines inside the restaurant and started to knock it down, Ruiz said.
“But once it went through the roof, it got out of control. We had to make sure people got outside,” he said.
A manager and workers were inside, Ruiz said.
It appears the fire started on the exterior, he said.
“We’re going to have to do further investigation on that,” Ruiz said.
He believes the building is a total loss.
A Perrysburg woman, who was going to eat at Social, said she alerted employees about the fire.
“We drove in and the fire was already going from outside,” Sara Larson said. “It wasn’t that big yet, so I ran in to one of the waitresses on the porch, and was like ‘do you know there’s a fire going on out here?’ And she was like ‘what?’
“We came running out, then they came running out and tried putting the fire out. We thought we kind of had it under control,” Larson said.
Smoke then started coming out of the roof, she said.
“It was frightening,” Larson said. “We got everybody out, everybody was safe. That was the biggest thing.
“I’m still a little shaky. It was scary.”
Perrysburg Township, Middleton Township and Rossford fire crews assisted.
Social Gastropub was started by Bruce Gradkowski, a University of Toledo quarterback who also played in the NFL.
(Sentinel-Tribune multi-media journalist J.D. Pooley did the interviews for this story.)
