Fire at Greenvale Townhouse Restaurant ignited by 'excessive grease build up,' Nassau fire marshal says

A Greenvale restaurant went up in flames early Saturday morning when "excessive grease build up ignited" in the kitchen, according to Nassau County's Chief Fire Marshall Michael Uttaro.

The fire at the Greenvale Townhouse Restaurant occurred just before 2 a.m. Nassau police said. When they arrived, police saw fire on the roof of a "commercial building" at 49 Glen Cove Rd., according to a press release from the Nassau County Police Department.

About 50 firefighters from the Roslyn Highlands Fire Department and seven other fire companies responded to the scene, according to Uttaro. The crew extinguished the flames in about 30 minutes, Uttaro said in an email.

No one was inside the building at the time and there were no reported injuries, according to Uttaro and the Nassau police press release.

Nassau's arson bomb squad detectives also responded to the scene to investigate, but Uttaro wrote in his email that officials determined "the cause of the fire was excessive grease build up ignited in the kitchen grease duct and spread to roof."

There was "serious damage to roof and kitchen," according to Uttaro's email. The Town of North Hempstead's Building Department was going to evaluate the structure of the building, the Nassau fire marshal wrote.

A Google search of the restaurant shows it is "temporarily closed."

By Sam Kmack

sam.kmack@newsday.com

Sam Kmack covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and previously worked as a city watchdog reporter in the Phoenix metro area, as well as an investigative journalist at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.