First came the pandemic, and then a fire destroyed a beloved restaurant in small-town NC
The embers still glowed and a small fire still burned on Main Street here a little after noon on Friday, more than seven hours after the first emergency call. By then, in the thick humidity of the early afternoon, all the firefighters and townspeople could do was stand and watch the smoldering remains of a restaurant the locals loved.
Amid the pandemic, times were already difficult here, as they are everywhere, for small businesses and restaurateurs. And then, without warning, came a roaring blaze that engulfed one end of a historic block in downtown Warrenton, about 55 miles northeast of Raleigh. The fire destroyed Milano’s, a beloved Italian restaurant, and left little behind but the building’s charred frame.
“It’s the oldest restaurant we have in town,” Aaron Ayscue, the owner of a restaurant across the street, said on Friday afternoon while he watched a bulldozer knock down a brick wall streaked with soot. “Been here longer than anyone else. I mean, we ate there last night.”
Since the start of the statewide stay-at-home order amid the coronavirus pandemic it had become a tradition, said Ayscue, 35. Fairly often he and his wife ordered carryout from Milano’s, just across Macon Street from the Hardware Cafe, the restaurant the Ayscues run together. On Thursday night, Ayscue said he picked up some lasagna from Milano’s. Then he and his wife had a date night.
Less than 12 hours later, Ayscue said, he received a call about a raging fire downtown. He feared it might be his own restaurant’s building that was ablaze, though the reality that it wasn’t brought little comfort. Standing there on Friday, watching the smoke billow out of a pile of rubble, Ayscue thought of childhood memories from Milano’s. He thought of its pizza, too.
If only he’d known that Thursday would be his last chance to order Milano’s lasagna.
“I’d have bought two, or savored it a little more,” he said. “Oh, it’s so sad.”
Fire breaks out on building’s second floor
Walter Gardner, who is both the mayor of Warrenton and the chief of its volunteer fire department, said the first emergency call of a fire came a little before 5 a.m. Eventually, he said, responders from 16 fire departments combined forces to fight the blaze, which Gardner said began in the rear corner of the second floor of a two-story brick building.
The building had been around for as long as Gardner, a Warrenton native, could remember. He couldn’t be sure, but Gardner, 65, thought the building had stood since 1905. He could tell stories from decades ago, when the building had been a Roses — or a “Roses five and 10,” as he called it, referencing the store’s original name that included mention of a nickel and dime. In his boyhood, Gardner often stopped inside.
“That was one of your afternoon stops after school,” he said. “Go in there, get something to eat.”
On Friday morning, he helped extinguish the flames that engulfed a piece of his childhood. It took dozens of men, he said, from more than a dozen fire departments, and Gardner said they spent about 90 minutes battling the worst of the fire. Nobody had been inside the building at the time of the fire, and no one had been hurt. A small flame still burned atop of a pile of debris while Gardner spoke. Soon a couple firefighters extinguished the last of that flame, too.
Fear of fire spreading to the newspaper
John Franks, 57, was among the first firefighters to respond on Friday morning. He surveyed the scene quickly and looked up “and saw flames coming out of every orifice in this building,” he said. He is married to the editor of the local newspaper, the Warren Record, and the paper’s offices were just a short walk down Main Street, three doors down from Milano’s.
Franks feared the fire might spread to the newspaper. He feared the loss of history.
“I was really calculating in my mind a plan to go into the Warren Record and rescue all of the papers,” he said. “Because they had papers, copies of the papers all the way back to I think 1896 or something. And I was formulating in my head a plan to rescue all those papers.”
There was no need, in time. The firewall held, limiting the damage, mainly, to the building the fire destroyed. A flower shop next door, CC’s Showers of Distinctions, suffered relatively minor damage by comparison. The rest of the block was left unscathed.
Piece of small town’s history gone
A man whom locals identified as the owner of Milano’s declined to be interviewed on Friday afternoon. At times he sat on the steps of a statue across the street, and watched the scene. In other moments, he paced and talked on the phone. During one quiet moment, a woman approached and attempted to offer him some comforting words.
“We’ve got to have each other’s back,” said Bridgette Boyd, a small business owner who’d offer her condolences to the owner of Milano’s. By Friday afternoon, a gofundme page had been created for the restaurant, seeking community support.
“It’s enough, to have business to stop because of the whole COVID thing,” Boyd said. “And now things are beginning to open up, and the opportunity to try to take another breath and another step, and then this happens.”
Across the street, a bulldozer pushed the walls to the ground, covering the sidewalks in charred bricks and debris. A crowd of locals had gathered on the grounds of the courthouse, across the street, to take in the spectacle. This month, the town of Warrenton was celebrating and recognizing historic preservation. Now one of the oldest buildings around was gone, and with it a piece of a small town’s place and history.
To help Milano’s
A gofundme page has been set up to help the restaurant’s owners rebuild the business. Go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/milanos to help.
