LISTEN: Fire scare at Marble Restaurant in Rosebank
ROSEBANK – Fume extraction system at Rosebank restaurant catches fire.
The Marble Restaurant situated in Keyes Art Mile recently experienced a fire scare when the fume extraction system of the restaurant, located in the ceiling from where the restaurant operates on the third storey, caught fire.
Local and international health and safety requirements such as the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and other Acts, state that it is the employers’ responsibility to protect the health, welfare and safety of their employees, and this requires the implementation of certain safety and control implements.
In the case of Marble Restaurant, the relevant health and safety measures were satisfied, according to restaurateur and chef, David Higgs, when a fire within the restaurants’ fume extraction system flared up before it was quickly contained on 18 February.
And while there was no visible damage to the restaurant, the exact cause of the fire is still unknown. Higgs said, “Never in my 30 years as a chef have I experienced an extraction fire until lunchtime on the day in question.
“It’s one of the things that every chef dreads or doesn’t want to happen… Working with fire is a completely different animal and we’re one of the first restaurants in South Africa to work on that sort of scale.” Higgs was referring to the restaurant’s use of a wood-fired grill to prepare food inspired by the open-fire trend.
Higgs said, however, that he was pleased that all safety measures were in place to guard against destruction of property or injury to any of the staff members at the restaurant during the fire scare.
“I think the beauty [through] everything that happened is that all the safety measures kicked in. The fire alarms went off, staff remained very calm… We evacuated the building, switched off the extraction so there was no feeding of oxygen to the fire [so as to] contain it.”
Access to the fume extraction system was denied by restaurant management at the time of publication.
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