ELKTON, Md. — Little remains of Unwined on the Water after a two-alarm fire in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday leaving regular customers like Christine and Stan Kaminski in a state of disbelief.
“When I first heard about it, I was like shocked. I was like, ‘What?’” said Christine.
Watch as regular customers react to the Elkton restaurant's collapse
“I’m devastated,” added Stan, “because we come here like once a month for lunch and during the summer, I’ll bring my boat down here, dock over there, me and my wife will come over here for lunch.”
Fire investigators have gained access to security footage from the site it shared with Triton Marina and have found no evidence of foul play.
“It was normal business hours yesterday,” said Master Dep. State Fire Marshal Oliver Alkire, “Everyone cleared out around 8:30 p.m., and from there, we have no activity on or off the property until about 1:10 a.m. where our investigators gleaned video and they were actually able to see the fire originating somewhere behind the property.”
Ironically, in recent years, a number of popular, well-established restaurants here in the county have burned down as well.
Most recently, Rookies Hilltop in Elkton, along with Jumbo Jimmy’s near Port Deposit two years ago and even Unwined on the Water’s previous location in North East back in 2019.
“We went to all those restaurants,” Stan Kaminski responded.
“It’s like, ‘What’s going on?’” added his wife.
“Yes. It’s a really a coincidence,” said her husband, “Why did that happen?”
For all of the speculation, investigators say it’s just that, a coincidence, including this latest fire that caused damages estimated at a million dollars.
“I can confirm that each of those have been determined to be accidental causes,” said Alkire, “While I understand and we understand from the Office of State Fire Marshal standpoint that someone may believe that something nefarious is going on, I can confirm without a doubt that each of these individual fires have been investigated and none of them are connected.”
