BOISE, Idaho — The owners of popular Mexican restaurant, Los Mariachis, are now trying to figure out what to do after a fire gutted their restaurant.
Edith Ortega stood outside of Los Mariachis in disbelief, watching what's left of the restaurant she and her family opened 17 years ago.
“I couldn’t sleep, maybe I got an hour sleep last night, I was just thinking about what had happened, how did it happen, a lot of questions I have,” Ortega said.
On Tuesday night, flames shot through the roof of the building, shattering windows and leaving debris scattered everywhere.
“Almost two decades we've been here, so it means a lot to me and it's not just our restaurant it was our home, our second home,” Ortega said.
Fire at Los Mariachis restaurant in Boise
She was at her other restaurant in Caldwell when she heard about the fire. She says the Boise restaurant was open for business but her mom closed it early because of an event at their Caldwell location.
“She always closes maybe around 9:30 to 10 p.m., but yesterday she closed 10 minutes to 8 p.m. and I think this started about 8:20 p.m. So, God was here,” Ortega said.
While she is devastated about the restaurant, she says she is happy no one was inside when the fire happened. Right now, investigators are trying to find out how and where the fire started, but it may take a while.
“The roof is partially collapsed and with that partial collapse it becomes unstable,” Boise Fire Department Deputy Chief Romeo Gervais said. “So, we've had to cut a hole in the side of the building to be able to enter some areas of the building that are safe, but there are other areas that we can't get into right now because of that potential for collapse.”
Seventeen years destroyed in a matter of minutes.
“We don't know what we're going to do right now, we're just thinking and waiting to see what our insurance tells us and our landlord,” Ortega said. “Hopefully we can reopen and establish a new establishment.”
Fire crews are also using a drone to get aerial shots of the building, which is allowing them to zoom in on areas of the roof where it collapsed and assess additional hazards for firefighters before they go inside of the building. Gervais says, this is the first time they've used a drone as part of an investigation for something like this.