Abandoned restaurant building burns in Midtown Anchorage

The Anchorage Fire Department was responding Wednesday morning to a blaze in a vacant restaurant building on East Fireweed Lane.

Firefighters were called to the building that once housed the China Garden restaurant at 6:17 a.m., said Assistant Chief Alex Boyd. The building was “well involved” with flames when the first crews arrived about five minutes later.

Fourteen units were on scene by 7:30 a.m. It wasn’t safe for firefighters to enter the building, making it difficult to control the blaze quickly, Boyd said. Dark smoke still billowed from the sagging roof about two hours after the fire began.

East Fireweed Lane was closed between Cordova and A streets.

There was no indication that anyone was inside the structure, Boyd said, and it’s unclear how the fire started.

The building has been the site of a number of fires in recent years, he said. Firefighters spent several hours extinguishing flames there in 2020.