Long Beach firefighters battle blaze at former Vito’s restaurant

Long Beach firefighters battled a “labor intensive” fire at the former Vito’s restaurant in the West End on Wednesday.

Long Beach Fire Chief Richard Corbett said the department received an emergency call at 10:41 a.m., when a resident who lives upstairs from the beachfront restaurant — now the Overlook at the Beach, located at 5 New York Ave. — reported that smoke was coming from the building.

About 30 firefighters responded to the scene, and while the fire was successfully extinguished within 25 minutes, Corbett said all fire units were released in about 90 minutes. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries, he said.

“It was just a labor-intensive fire, but everybody was fine and everybody went home and that’s the main thing,” Corbett said.

The residents of the apartment upstairs were home during the time the small blaze broke out, but Corbett said that they were evacuated and no one was injured.

“We had to open up some walls in the restaurant and some ceilings in the restaurant and I had to open up a wall in the apartment directly above where the fire was located to make sure there was no fire extension,” Corbett said.

Corbett said the exact cause of the fire, which originated in a wall behind kitchen equipment on the first floor of the restaurant, could not be determined,

“It wasn’t a suspicious fire,” he said. “We notified the Fire Marshall. We think it might be something electrical.”