I have previously been quite critical of this place in an article where I stated that I don't think the owners actually give a damn about this place anymore. Well if they did, they certainly don't now because there is nothing left of it.
They had been experiencing rather extreme drops in business with the arrival of several sushi restaurants in the area that do much better food, so it wouldn't surprise me if this was an intentional burning for insurance purposes, if that sort of thing even exists in this country.
Image captured from a friend's balcony at their condo
I am a bit suspicious when anything is able to burn this badly in Da Nang because everything is built out of cement, which you might be aware is a little difficult to start on fire. The timing of the fire, being in the middle of the night and all, is also quite suspicious.
still taken from a video taken by a friend
There was a video of the entire thing and while you can't see it I liked there was a guy there with the garden hose and a small plastic bucket. Yeah, that's not how extinguishing out of control blazes works unfortunately. At least they were trying to do something so good on them for trying to help.
Something else that is a bit concerning is that here in Da Nang we are constantly annoyed by fire department drills where they will get entire condo buildings, including my own along with my laundry that is out to dry. These drills are unannounced and will just happen all over the city on certain days and I can only guess that this is to make sure the hydrants work as well as the equipment on the trucks.
According to a friend who owns the business directly next door to Fune (the now burned down sushi place) it took the fire department more than 40 minutes to even arrive on the scene. I guess this would be ok if the fire department was on the other side of town and there was gridlocked traffic but it is only a few km away from here and it was in the middle of the night when the blaze started.
Could it be that this burn was planned and the fire department intentionally stayed away?
again, photo taken by a friend
So now this is all that remains of Fune, the restaurant that has been slowly failing more and more as the years went by. I guess I'm happy that nobody died or was even hurt, but it is extremely suspicious that this happened at all. I don't know how fire investigations work in this country but there doesn't appear to be very much left to even sift through.
The downside is that the neighboring businesses were actually doing quite well but now they have to close for a while to repair the damage to their own establishments.