A Carthage business owner hopes to reopen after a Sunday night fire.
"We hope so, yes, to reopen, but it depends how things go," said Santina Alfano, who owns Alfano's Pizza in Carthage. "I'm just kind of waiting right now, talking to insurance companies, the fire marshal, seeing what to do. We don't know what to do yet."
Firefighters were called at 10 p.m. Sunday to the restaurant at 530 Wabash and found the kitchen area of the building "fully involved," Fire Chief Eric Shuman said. "The kitchen and the rear of the building are a total loss."
Shuman met with the state fire marshal Monday morning to determine whether the building was safe and to try to determine the cause.
"We're going to call it electrical," Shuman said. "We took a lot of pictures, went through everything. We saw a lot more during (the day) than at night."
Alfano and her three children, who live in an apartment above the restaurant, escaped the building without injury.
"We saw smoke coming upstairs," she said. "We just walked out."
Safely outside, she watched as fire burned through part of her business, leaving her with a lot of decisions to make for the future.
"There's not a kitchen anymore," she said.
The restaurant was not open for business at the time of the fire.
Alfano's opened in November and served lunch and supper Monday through Saturday.
"We're keeping our fingers crossed that insurance will cover everything, and they will be able to get it all cleaned up and reopened ... in that location," said Amy Graham, director of Carthage Community Development. "It was just a lovely little restaurant."