Kitchen Disaster
Heights restaurant goes up in flames: Long-standing favorite suffers major fire damage
An unattended deep frying pot is to blame for a Wednesday morning fire that wrecked havoc on a popular Heights-area grocery store and restaurant.
At 7 a.m., flames broke out in the kitchen of the La Michoacana meat market and restaurant on Shepherd at 14th Street. Firefighters arrived at the scene in minutes, ushering out the owner's family from a second-floor apartment and subduing the blaze a half hour later.
While the vintage 1945 building suffered minimal damage, heavy smoke destroyed the entire contents of the long-standing Mexican grocery — a favorite spot for area residents looking for a quick bite at the store's cafe, bakery or deli.
"I come here to get coffee, sometimes get breakfast, lunch sometimes," regular customer Bernardo Garcia told KTRK. "I know most of the employees here, so I feel bad for them . . . It doesn't look that bad, but apparently it is."
Roughly 30 firefighters arrived at the scene to extinguish the flames. No injuries were reported.
"Kitchen fires are the largest cause of residential fires in the nation," Captain Ruy Lozano with the Houston Fire Department tells CultureMap. "But they're also one of the easiest to prevent."
HFD reminds home chefs that, more times than not, people sustain serious injuries from attempting to put out a kitchen fire.
Be sure to never move a grease pan fire or pour water or flour on it; cover the flames with a lid instead. As a precaution, turn pot handles towards the back of the stove and refrain from overfilling containers, especially when deep frying.
