CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. -- Firefighters believe it was a lightning strike that started a fire at an Ontario County restaurant Sunday afternoon.
Charlie Riedel's Restaurant on County Road 10 in Canandaigua is shut down until further notice after the roof of the building caught fire mid-afternoon.
Restaurant Cook Paul Inglesby said he was at a stoplight near the restaurant when the unexpected happened.
“This big bolt of lightning came across the sky,” Inglesby said. “It forked off in one direction, and hit the building in the next. I’ve never had such a terrifying moment in my life.”
Inside the restaurant, employee Ally Mack and her friends tried to figure out what was going.
“It was so loud, I didn’t know what to do,” Mack said. “You just heard the big giant bang and then the alarms started going off and everybody stood there and we didn’t know what to do.”
At first they thought a transformer had been hit, but it wasn’t long before they discovered what had really happened.
“We pulled into the parking lot and I ran in like a mad man trying to get everybody, well at first I thought keep them in because it’s a major thunderstorm, and then the fireman said that the buildings on fire so it was ‘get everybody out,’” Inglesby said.
Firefighters said when they arrived they saw fire coming from the cupola on the roof. City of Canandaigua firefighter Pat Phillips was the first firefighter in the restaurant.
“On the inside there wasn’t a whole lot of smoke until we got the drop ceiling opened up,” Phillips said. “So as soon as the ceiling comes down, there was a little bit of fire on the inside. We knocked down it quick with a single hand line.”
While the fire was fairly easy to put out and no one was hurt, there was a bit of sorrow felt by the community. The cupola was from the amusement park Roseland Park which closed down in the 1980’s.
“Generations grew up with Roseland so we’re sad to see that go,” Canandaigua Town Supervisor Pam Helming said.
Thankfully she said there are other memories inside the restaurant from Roseland Park which seem to have survived.
She said it could take a couple weeks before Charlie’s is up and running again.
A thunderstorm went through the area, sparking warnings from the National Weather Service.