Restaurant fire caused by sparkler cocktail

A sparkler in a cocktail caused a major blaze to break out in Birmingham’s Caffè Di Milano on Saturday night.

@karolinahojda Oh no #birmingham #arcadian ♬ original sound – Karolina

A TikTok of the incident, shared by Karolina Hojda, has been viewed more than eight million times at the time of writing, and shows staff trying to put out the fire using small buckets of water as customers exit the premises. No injuries resulted from the incident.

Though the precise circumstances of the fire are currently unclear, a spokesperson for West Midlands Fire & Rescue told Metro: “We were called at 23.03pm last [Saturday] night and sent two crews from Highgate. When they got to the scene the fire had been extinguished by the staff. The cause of the fire was believed to be accidental, and had been started by a sparkler in a drink. The fire then spread to wall decorations. Fire crews attended and the fire had been put out on arrival at around 23.28pm.”

A statement from Caffè Di Milano the following day was shared to Instagram: “…we will remain closed until further notice. We would like to take this time to thank all Milano staff, who were able to control and extinguish the fire before the fire services attended. We hope you appreciate this is a difficult time for the business, team and everyone involved in the incident. We ask that you please bare this in mind when sharing and commenting on such a sensitive situation. Both staff and customers are all safe…We will be back bigger and better.”

In related news: diners flee as Christmas tree catches fire at London restaurant.