Shinobi Sushi’s doors are still temporarily shuttered on Tuesday after an early Friday morning blaze caused significant damage to the rear of their building.
The eatery’s website says they are ‘temporarily closed because of fire damage. Sorry for any inconvenience.’
Fans of the Japanese restaurant, located in Maple Ridge’s downtown core on 224th Street, took to their Facebook page to express their condolences.
A post by the restaurant written shortly after the fire had 57 comments, and was shared 79 times.
Dear customer
We have sad story to tell you about Shinobi. This morning around 4:30am we have a big unknown fire at…
Posted by Shinobi Sushi on Friday, August 14, 2020
Maple Ridge Fire and Rescue deputy chief, Michael Van Dop said the investigation on the cause of the blaze is still ongoing.
“It’s still not 100 per cent wrapped up but it’s leaning towards an undetermined cause,” he said.
“I’m confident that it was nothing to do with the restaurant processes that lead to the fire and it looked like it was an exterior fire that got into the building.”
Both the front and the rear of the restaurant are fenced off, and there is a tarp covering the area affected by the fire, but onlookers can still see a badly damaged ventilation chimney on the roof.
Original Story
Maple Ridge firefighters were busy early Friday morning as two blazes in the city required their attention.
A sushi eatery in the city’s downtown area on 224th street has suffered some major damage after a fire was started shortly after 4 a.m. this morning.
The rear of Shinobi Japanese Restaurant is quite charred after the blaze.
Maple Ridge Fire and Rescue deputy chief, Michael Van Dop, said there were no injuries and the fire is under investigation.
“We got control of it pretty quickly,” he said.
“We did a defensive fire attack from the exterior and then moved inside, and in a matter of a few minutes we had the fire knocked down.”
Despite the fire not being too challenging to put out, Van Dop said it was no small blaze
“We had lots of flame, lots of smoke, and the inside of the building was pretty charged up with smoke as well.”
READ MORE: Man suffers smoke inhalation as shop burns in Maple Ridge fire
He said, it will require quite a bit of work before reopening.
“Due to the state of the inside, it’s certainly going to be a business closure for the foreseeable future,” Van Dop said.
“There’s quite a bit of smoke and heat damage inside of the structure, and there’s a little bit of fire damage.”
Previous to being called to the restaurant, crews were battling another fire at a house on the 23600 block of Kanaka Way.
Van Dop said the call came in at 3:50 a.m.
“It was a fire that originated in the kitchen area upstairs and crews got a quick handle on it,” he said.
“The occupants got some water on it in advance, so that helped control it.”
The deputy chief said though there were no injuries, the people who live there will probably be displaced for a short time.
“But there’s no terrible damage in that particular case.”
Fire crews were redeployed from the house fire to the Shinobi Restaurant blaze once they had it in hand.
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