Businesses figure out what to do after N. Cotner and 66th street fire

Just before noon on Saturday, smoke could be seen billowing out of the roof of a business near north Cotner and 66th street

Lincoln Fire and Rescue was able to contain the flames, however, a shared attic in the strip mall allowed extensive smoke damage to all of the 7 businesses.

“Extreme amounts of smoke damage. It was sad. This is my life, literally,” Owner of Cook’s Cafe, Jessica Simons said.

She says Cook’s Café took quite a hit.

“We had our hood systems on, and hood systems draw in fresh air so that you can expel your CO2 when you’re cooking along your line, and all we did was just draw in all this smoke because our hoods were on the whole time, so it was just drawing in massive amounts of smoke,” Simons said.

However, they were able to shut off the gas burners and evacuate every customer in the restaurant – which was full at the time – safely.

“Sitting in here, there was literally plates of food with food still on it, so when it happened it was just like go, get out,” Simons said.

“You could see exactly where the ice cubes even were from the glasses of water. Isn’t that just the craziest thing? All that ash just settled into there,” Simons said.

The cause is still under investigation. It was a scary situation for patrons.

“Flames shooting out of the back of the building, so we evacuated the cafe, and it was chaos, complete chaos,” Simons said.

Cook’s Cafe, as well as all the other businesses will have to remain closed until they hear from fire investigators.

In the meantime, they’ve had to send a lot of loyal customers home.

“There’s people here every day. Every. Day. So they’re lost, they don’t know what to do. They’re still pulling up. They’re waking up to the cafe and it’s super hard. We’re like ‘oh we’re not open.’ I’ve definitely shed a few tears with some of our regular customers,” Simons said.

One bright spot in all of this, Cook’s Cafe was able to donate several hundred pounds of food to the food bank, which was picked up this morning.