VANCOUVER, Wash. — Police and fire officials in Vancouver are investigating after a burglary and suspected arson at a sports bar early Monday morning. The spree and subsequent damage to the restaurant could mean months of rebuilding.
"You pick a place like this on a Sunday during football, it's wall-to-wall people," said Dan Finley, the owner of Charlie's Sports Bar and Grill. "On Wing Wednesday, the place is packed."
Since early Monday, however, the place Finley has owned for more than a decade has been empty and quiet.
"It was vacant for about a year, year-and-a-half, and my wife and I decided to open up a bar and it was the one we met at," Finley said.
That meeting was 33 years ago. This week, the couple celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary in Nashville, Tennessee. But the trip to was cut short when the alarm company gave Finley a call.
"(They were) telling me that there were motion alarms going off," he recalled. "I figured it might be one of my vendors, and they didn't put in the right code or something."
He learned that wasn't the case. Instead, he said suspects broke through one of the doors and made a beeline for the cash register.
"The alarm was going off," Finley said. "My guess is that they kind of panicked. They were only in here for maybe a minute, and dumped gasoline that they brought in here... dumped gasoline, lit it on fire and ran out the door."
The sprinklers activated and kept the flames at bay until police and firefighters entered the building. Finley received video of the aftermath and got on the first flight back.
"The fire damage was pretty contained, but man, the smoke and water, it's bad," he said.
Finley told KGW his 20 employees are now out of work, and repair crews informed him that the work to reopen could take five months.
"It took us 11 years to get to this point of making changes and making things better, and just over time, you get a little more money and throw more money into it. I just want it to be back where it was," he said.
He's remaining hopeful, and he's offering a $5,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
On Friday, Finley set up a GoFundMe page to support his staff who've been put out of work due to the fire.
