Grease Fire Destroys Restaurant Customers, Workers Flee Luigi’S; Upstairs Apartments Evacuated

A grease fire that spread out of control gutted a popular Spokane restaurant Friday and forced the evacuation of 19 apartments, officials said.

No one was hurt in the spectacular blaze at Luigi’s Italian Restaurant, but the business was a total loss, firefighters said.

The fire apparently began about 12:05 a.m. in an exhaust hood in the kitchen and quickly spread throughout the restaurant at 113 N. Bernard.

The dining room was closed at the time, but patrons were still having drinks in the cocktail lounge, which stays open until 2 a.m.

Customers and employees ran outside to escape the flames and thick smoke.

“Luckily it was a slow night,” owner Matt Pettit said Friday afternoon.

The fire blew out the front windows, and flames licked up the outside of the building, scorching paint all the way to the top of the four-story structure.

Residents of the Metropolitan Apartments, located above the restaurant, were alerted to the fire when an alarm sounded, said Gary Miller, city fire marshal.

They got out of the recently remodeled building unscathed, but won’t be allowed to return to their homes for some time while contractors repair damage.

The Onion restaurant next door received only minor damage, Miller said.

Luigi’s moved into the Bernard Street location in 1988.

With its wood paneling, pressed-tin ceiling and acclaimed salmon lasagna, it quickly became one the city’s favorite spots for pasta.

Bloomsday runners were known to flock to the restaurant the night before the big road race for carbo loading, and readers of the Pacific Northwest Inlander recently voted Luigi’s the city’s favorite Italian restaurant.

A banner announcing that news was one of the few things that survived Friday’s fire. It was still flapping on a wall outside the restaurant as firefighters mopped up the blaze nine hours after it began.

Pettit refused to let the fire get him down Friday, saying he would rebuild.

“We’ve got good insurance,” he said as he watched employees pour $20,000 worth of spoiled beer, wine and liquor into the gutters outside the restaurant. “And when you’ve got stuff like high school shootings going on in the world, this is nothing. We’ve gotten a lot of support already - people calling and coming by. We’ll get through this. We’re troopers.”