- December 26, 2024
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Flagler Beach’s Turtle Shack restaurant sustained significant damage in an early morning kitchen fire on Nov. 25.
The fire started in the back of the building at around 6 a.m., Flagler County Fire Rescue Chief Michael Tucker said. Emergency dispatch received the first call about the fire at 6:14 a.m. and the first Flagler Beach Fire Department team arrived at 6:20 a.m., with Flagler County Fire Rescue shortly behind them.
Tucker called the damage “extensive.”
“They're going to have to have a significant amount of work done to the facilities to even begin to think about reopening again,” Tucker said. “It’ll be a while.”
Because the Turtle Shack — located at 2123 N. Ocean Shore Blvd. — is closed on Mondays, no one was in the restaurant when it caught fire, and no one was injured during it. The first crews on scene reported flame and smoke coming from the rear of the building, where the restaurant’s kitchen is.
Tucker was one of the firefighters on scene working the fire, in the five Flagler County Fire Rescue units. Containing the fire was a joint effort between the Flagler Beach Fire Department, the Flagler County Fire Rescue and the Palm Coast Fire Department, according to a Facebook post from the FBFD.
Tucker said the fire was controlled — meaning no longer advancing — in about 22 minutes after teams arrived, and fully put out by 9:24 a.m. FBFD Chief Bobby Pace, who said he came on team in the aftermath, said the crews did an excellent job knocking down the fire and preventing it from spreading to the neighboring buildings.
Flagler Beach city building official Rick McFadden was already on scene assessing the damage, Pace said.
“The fire department did an amazing job,” Turtle Shack owner Linda Niday said. “They pretty much contained it for the kitchen, in the bathroom.”
Niday told the Observer that while she was still in shock, she and her son have received already a lot of support from the community.
“Just everybody [has been] calling and texting and just saying, making sure everybody's okay, if there’s anything they can do to help, to just let them know,” Niday said. “It's just been amazing.”
Though the Turtle Shack has been around for longer, Niday bought the business in 2011 and has run it for the last 13 years and employees 22 people.
They do not own the building, she said, just the business. As such, the fire department will need to send the landlord the report — which could take a week — and then the landlord will need to file with their insurance. For now, Niday said, they don’t really know what’s going to happen next.
Pace said in cases where buildings are close together, like the Turtle Shack to its neighbors, they have to be careful the flames don’t spread to neighboring buildings.
“Radiant heat alone can ignite one of these other buildings,” Pace said.
Once on scene, Tucker said, a team first assess life safety and then any potential exposures. He said the response to prevent such exposure fires has to be “pretty close to immediate.”
Because the departments all share the same radio frequency and often perform joint training initiatives together, the three departments are able to work together very well, Tucker said.
“We work together quite well,” he said. “As the chief of Flagler County watching the three fire departments work together, you know, it's pretty amazing. It's not something that's experienced in many places across this country.”
