Insurance agent Charlie Rowland, left, speaks to Ruth Oehmig, owner of Cafe on the Corner, as friend Isabel McCall stands nearby. The Lookout Mountain restaurant was badly damaged by an overnight fire.
The inside of Cafe on the Corner after an overnight fire destroyed the restaurant atop Lookout Mountain.
Site of fire at Cafe on the Corner on Lookout Mountain.Fortunes turned quickly for a Lookout Mountain, Tenn., restaurant Tuesday morning.
Just hours after the USA Cycling National Championships brought a customer-filled Memorial Day, fire engulfed Cafe on the Corner, a small, locally-owned restaurant across the street from Lookout Mountain Baptist Church and next to the post office at 826 Scenic Highway.
“They just had a busy wonderful day and sold a lot of food,” Lookout Mountain Fire and Police chief Randall Bowden said, “and after a wonderful day like that, it was a tragedy at four in the morning.”
That’s when the first call about a fire at the building came in.
A gas explosion on the outside of the building spread to the roof and because of the building’s age and structuring, the flames were hard to fight, Bowden said.