A second restaurant fire on Benvenuto Ave, and the butterflies came through fine
Thursday's blaze gutted Truffles Catering's Central Saanich building, three weeks after the Garden Fork fire across the street, but power came back fast enough to keep 70 species of butterfly comfortable next door.
A Thursday-night fire damaged Truffles Catering's Central Saanich building, but spared neighbouring Butterfly Gardens and every creature inside it.
Central Saanich firefighters, with help from Saanich, reached Benvenuto Avenue around 7:30 p.m. and found heavy smoke. They had the fire out in about half an hour. The interior was badly damaged, but the building's structure largely held. No one was inside at the time, and the cause is still under investigation.
The worry next door was the animals. Power had to be cut, then restored, before conditions slipped for the butterflies, tortoises, an iguana and a flamingo that live there. "They were just fine, like nothing ever happened," said Central Saanich Fire Chief Stacey Lee.
It's the second fire on this stretch this month. On June 6, a blaze destroyed the Garden Fork restaurant across the street, in a building that housed a Smitty's for nearly 30 years before becoming Sassy's in 2012. That cause is also still being investigated.
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