By Nathan Deen
Published on October 24, 2007
Jerry’s Cajun Cafe, located on 9th Avenue near the PJC Pensacola Campus, has reopened after seven months of rebuilding and repairing damage caused by a fire that destroyed the restaurant’s kitchen.
It was quite a scene on Feb. 27, the day of the fire. Employees and customers stood outside of the burning building, and PJC students and faculty members watched from campus, as the police and fire department shut down 9th Avenue.
Linda Bloom, head of the PJC Business Department, was eating lunch at Jerry’s when the fire happened.
“I had stopped by Jerry’s to get a roast-beef sandwich,” said Bloom, whose waitress told her that there was a fire in the building and to follow her out the front door. Bloom was not able to get to her car, which was parked in the back near the location of the fire and next to propane tanks.
“I just knew that I wasn’t going to have a car,” she said.
Fortunately, Bloom’s car did not incinerate. Bloom said that because the wind was blowing opposite of the direction her car was parked, the fire did not come into contact with the car.
Although she would have liked to have been released from the scene sooner, she had to spend two hours worrying about her car and her busy schedule.
“It was a memorable afternoon,” she said. “It was very frustrating because of the fire department.”
Shawn Higgins, a culinary arts major at PJC and a former chef at Jerry’s Cajun Cafe was on duty when the fire happened. Higgins said that as one of the cooks was assorting and discarding boxes, the cook accidentally and unknowingly let one of the boxes come into contact with a stove. The cook stacked that box onto a pile of other boxes and with the help of the wind, the fire began.
Higgins and his co-workers were unable to put out the fire, so they evacuated the building. Higgins said that most of the damage was caused by a pressure cap blowing off of a 200 gallon propane tank.
“We were sitting across the street and watching it burn,” Higgins said, “then all of a sudden: Boom!”
Higgins, like many of his other co-workers, had found himself out of a job. A week later he went to work for Landry’s Seafood House in downtown Pensacola. He currently works at the Crowne Plaza Hotel across from the Pensacola Civic Center.
Jerry’s Cajun Café officially reopened for business on Oct. 4 and is now back on a regular schedule.