LANCASTER, N.Y. — Many workers are currently without a job after a second-story fire caused smoke and water damage to The Yelling Goat in Lancaster Tuesday. But they're not going to give up that easy.

"This is our livelihood; this is what we do for a living. Owning a restaurant is perhaps a nice title, but it's a hard-working job and we're working owners so this is how we make our car payment and our mortgage payment and buy our food and so forth so it's no different than anybody else and we want to get back up and going," said Yelling Goat Owner John Rooney.

Rooney has been in contact with the rest of his employees affected by this fire, and plans to keep them in the discussion moving forward.

"I spoke with most of them were here yesterday, watching the thing go up and so we'll be meeting with them, I expect, this Friday to hand out checks and then we will give them the lowdown of what we know from that point," he said.

The next steps for Rooney are to work with the land owner he leases from and come up with a timeline.

"We're going through the motions now to get the insurance involved and get things straightened out and get back up and running. They come in and assess the damage and then the land owner will assess his part of the damage and then between the two of us, it'll be ramped back up quickly,” he said.

Lancaster Fire Department Assistant Chief Mark Stonebraker says they could have lost the building if it weren't for the teamwork of surrounding fire agencies.

"It's a big building,” said Stonebraker. “We could've lost this building because it got into the attic."

Rooney is also grateful for the support of the community and will miss them just as much for the time being.

"That's been the basic gist of it, ‘sad you're not here’ and ‘can't wait for you to open again,’ and we feel the same way," he said.

But customers and workers shouldn't be worried of no return for the Yelling Goat.

“We do it because we enjoy it, and to have things interrupted like this, out of our control so to speak, is a real letdown. That said, things happen, and rather than crawl away, we're just looking to rebuild as quickly as possible,” said Rooney.