Tenants above Charred restaurant detail nightmare fallout from devastating fire

The tenants who live above Hamilton’s Charred Rotisserie House say the fire that tore through the eatery last week left them without a place to live, unable to retrieve their belongings and one tenant says their apartment was even looted while they were away.

The popular restaurant on James Street North went up in flames last Thursday after a fire that began in the kitchen quickly spread to the second and third floors of the building.

The exact cause of the blaze remains under investigation.

Four tenants live in the apartment above Charred and say that although they are thankful no one was hurt, they are dealing with a nightmare.

Riley Osbourne says not only is he now homeless, when he returned to get some of his things, he noticed some items were missing.

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He’s alleging that the restoration company and landlord failed to secure the building.

“They didn’t close our doors, and they insisted they had to keep them unlocked, because they were going in and out and because of that we had all of our stuff stolen. Tens of thousands of dollars, valuables, jewelry, handbags,” Osbourne said. “The landlords have been largely uncommunicative.”

The entire building is owned by brothers Morty and Mark Morgenstern.

“It’s funny, that we have four tenants and one is complaining about things missing and the others are not, so what can I tell you. The doors are secure, nobody can go in and how things are stolen I have no idea,” Mark Morgenstern said.

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Another tenant, Mark Burnett, has been staying in Guelph since the fire and says he just wants to return home.

“We talked to our insurance guy, it’s structurally unstable so he can’t even come in to look at it and start our claim for maybe weeks, until they fix the stability problem but nobody’s telling us what’s going on,” Burnett said.

Mark Morgenstern says he too is waiting for insurance, adding that it will take time to clean up and repair the building.

“You can imagine I am having lots of sleepless nights, it’s not every day that you go through something like this,” he said.

Morgenstern also said he hopes to re-open the restaurant by the fall, but it all depends on when he gets approval from the insurance company and building inspection officials.