The family-owned Brazilian restaurant Rei Da Picanha and neighboring Damata Barbershop burned Monday in East Somerville, the second five-alarm fire within two weeks after a blaze displaced 43 residents and several businesses at 1137-1147 Broadway in Teele Square.
The Monday fire started at 9:58 p.m. and took more than eight hours to put out, fire officials said. A one-story building houses the restaurant and barbershop at 129 Broadway and 244 Broadway, respectively. There is a wireless phone store in the same stretch of retail, and a Santander bank branch at the end of the block.
“The Rei Da Picanha restaurant and the Damata Barbershop are total losses,” firefighters said Tuesday. The Total Wireless store “also sustained heavy damage as firefighters had to open the roof and pull down ceilings when the fire threatened to overrun a firewall. Other businesses, including the Santander Bank, sustained smoke damage.” The bank is expected to reopen Thursday, according to an online notice.
A crowdfunding campaign posted for the Nonato family by family friend Chadi Salamoun has quickly drawn around $5,300 out of a goal of $35,000.
“If you’ve been to their family-owned restaurant, Rei Da Picanha, you’ve been showered by their love. The Nonato family builds relationships with and supports Somerville’s unhoused population, and they’ve been quietly doing this for years,” Salamoun wrote. “It is our turn to help.”
After running the restaurant (the “King of Sirloin”) for 15 years, the family has lost its income and ability to cover the immediate costs of daily life and emergencies, Salamoun said. Family members “now face the daunting reality of starting over again.”
The East Somerville Main Streets organization is preparing another campaign for the barbershop, another Brazilian-owned business. It’s been in the neighborhood for at least seven years and has been “a great community parter,” said Lindsay Allen, executive director of East Somerville Main Streets.
“For a small business, an unexpected event like this can change everything overnight. Beyond the physical damage, it can mean uncertainty, interrupted work, and the challenge of figuring out how to move forward,” Allen said in the fundraising text. “Every donation, no matter the amount, can make a difference … Small businesses are an important part of what makes East Somerville feel like home. When one of them faces a difficult moment, our community has the power to stand beside them.”
The fire was hard to put down. “Arriving fire companies encountered heavy smoke and heat coming from the basement. Firefighters initially stretched hose lines into the basement to attempt to find and extinguish the fire, however conditions inside the building continued to deteriorate and all firefighters were ordered to evacuate due to safety concerns,” fire officials said.
“The first floor and roof of the building collapsed, which in addition to heavy smoke, made the fire difficult to extinguish,” fire officials said. It was also hard to turn off power to the structure; two Somerville firefighters suffered electrical shocks at the scene and were taken to a hospital for treatment.
Crews from Cambridge, Belmont, Boston, Brookline, Chelsea, Everett, Lexington, Malden, Medford, Revere and Stoneham came to help put out the fire, and other cities covered Somerville fire stations.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, fire officials said.
