SALT LAKE CITY — A business fire this week on Main Street didn’t just destroy a building — it shattered Jesús Rojas’ livelihood.
“We are devastated,” Rojas said Thursday, two days after the fire that totaled his small Mexican snack business, La Rana Snacks.
“All my life is there. It destroyed everything, everything.”
Firefighters reported no injuries in the fire at 1518 S. Main, but the quick, fierce blaze destroyed the small structure, reduced to scorched rubble piled in the center of the corner lot as of Thursday. “It looks like a bomb went off,” Rojas said.
Salt Lake Fire Capt. Brandt Hancuff said the fire is still under investigation, with more information possibly forthcoming next week.
Meantime, Rojas, who was renting the location, said he’s not sure what comes next. The business cooked, prepared and packaged a range of Mexican snacks and food items — tostadas, tortilla chips, tortillas, potato chips and duritos, puffed wheat snacks that resemble pinwheels — and sold them to Latino markets around Utah.
He’s still working with insurers, but, at any rate, said he’d essentially have to start from zero at a new location, getting the proper permits, equipment and more.
“I can’t do anything. The building was completely destroyed. We don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Rojas, originally from Mexico. “I don’t have anything — zero.”
Then there’s the future of the employees, around 10 of them, to consider. La Rana had been operating at the location, former home of the Golden Dragon restaurant, since May 2016. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with all the workers, who I love,” he said.
The fire was called in on Tuesday at around 7:20 a.m. and though the La Rana building was destroyed, firefighters were able to prevent the blaze from spreading to other adjacent structures. Plumes of smoke from the intense fire were visible from miles around.
Rojas said workers present at the time were taken by surprise, tipped off that something was amiss by smoke. “There was just a lot of smoke and they ran out. It was very quick,” he said. Even they lost personal belongings that they left inside the structure to quickly escape.
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