Popular Taco restaurant heavily damaged by fire

By Joe Johnson

A popular restaurant specializing that specialized in serving up tacos was abruptly shut down Thursday afternoon by a damaging fire.

the fire appeared to do significant damage to Taqueria Juaritos on Jefferson Road, and to a lesser extent the adjacent Food Mart.

The public was notified about the fire by a Nixle alert issued by the police department at 3:54 p.m. warning that the roadway had been shut down due to fire suppression activities.

Responding firefighters were met by a raging blaze,

“Due to the fire load they had to go to defensive strategy, using an aerial attack to get the fire under control,” said Adam Gardner,, spokesman for the Athens-Clarke County Fire and Emergency Services Department.

“They were able to preserve a lot of the structure,” he said

A woman who was in Taqueria Juaritos gave the following account in a Facebook post:

“So I was inside eating when this happened,”the woman said. “At first I assumed it was just a trashcan in the bathroom that was on fire, but smoke very quickly started coming out of the vents and by the time we all got outside there was so much smoke. So glad everyone got out safely, but very sad about one of our favorite eateries in town.”

The fire had been fully extinguishes by about 5:40 p.m.

Gardner said that investigators from the fire marshal’s office will return to the scene Friday to begin the process of determining the cause and origin of the fire.

Photos by Jeff Snowden