Franklin Barbecue’s pit room was destroyed by fire on August 26, a Saturday morning. The vaunted barbecue joint—where hundreds of hungry patrons typically queue on a daily basis—has been closed since. We got an inside look at the damage caused by the fire and talked to people behind the scenes to understand what happened.
Franklin Barbecue’s pit room was destroyed by the fire, and the schedule for reopening is still in negotiations. Owners Aaron and Stacy Franklin are making plans to rebuild the pit room, and also working with the City of Austin on a plan to cook briskets in the meantime. Franklin said he hopes to bring in trailer-mounted smokers behind the building, just like they used to have, as a temporary fix. Franklin estimates they’d have a capacity of 100 briskets (as opposed to 110 before the fire) once the plan is approved, hopefully within a month.
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
The 911 call came in at 5:27 a.m., according to the official fire report from the Austin Fire Department. The first truck arrived on scene a minute later. One person was in line for barbecue.
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
The fire started on the east wall behind the big rotisserie smoker they call Bethesda. A hot coal from the smoker was likely ejected from one of the fire pits because of high winds in the outer bands of Hurricane Harvey. AFD division chief Michael Frick thinks that it “probably smoldered for an hour or two,” along the back wall before the fire started. Frick, who was on scene during the fire, is a barbecue fan who has stories of other pit room fires. Because of Franklin’s reputation for long lines, it was Frick’s first time inside the restaurant.
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
Aaron Franklin was awoken by a phone call from general manager Benji Jacob at 5:37 a.m. He quickly dressed and arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes later. Five fire trucks were already on site, and the fire was out by 6:08 a.m. As Franklin looked on from a rain-soaked sidewalk outside the smoking shell of a pit room, a couple approached him and asked for a selfie. He was too taken aback to decline.
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
Miraculously, the six offset smokers were unharmed. Franklin joked about how hard they’d tried to remove all the paint from the propane tanks as they turned them into smokers. But thanks to the fire “we finally got all the paint burnt off.” The concrete deck of the pit room and the structure below are still sound. Demolition of the second-story walls and roof are underway. Franklin estimates that the total rebuild will be completed around Thanksgiving, “fingers crossed.”
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
A lone cook was working in the prep kitchen between the restaurant and the pit room when the fire broke out. He smelled an odd kind of smoke, looked in the dining room for anything strange, then walked into the pit room to find the back wall in flames. He looked for a fire extinguisher. One was within the fire, and the other was too hot to touch. He planned an exit out the back door of the pit room, but doubled back through the fire before escaping—he wanted to shut the door to the prep kitchen.Division chief Frick says the last minute decision helped stop further damage. “It helped save the restaurant portion,” he says. The cook said it was about 45 seconds between the time he smelled smoke until he made his final exit.
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
Bethesda will need some repairs, but will be up and running once the pit room is rebuilt. It was full of ribs when the fire started, and they were charred to a crisp. Most were taken out, but a couple shelves at the back of the pit were out of reach, and the ribs remained for days. Thankfully, those racks of ribs and a cooler full of beer were the only casualties.
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
The Franklin team is in good spirits despite the setback. All employees are still being paid, and some are bored enough to pick up shifts elsewhere. Franklin says he now has time for an occasional nap, and is excited to take on the new project of rebuilding. When they first built the pit room in 2014, it was done while the restaurant was operating. Now they get to focus on fixing what they didn’t like about the original. The roof will slope to allow for better ventilation, and noncombustible materials will make up more of the finishes. As for armchair pitmasters who questioned the lack of sprinklers in the pit room, Franklin said “with all the heat and smoke in here, they’d go off once a week.” The Franklins have also reflected on what this means for the whole Franklin crew. The first iteration of Franklin was about the couple and the expansion of the Franklin business. “This is about all of us. The entire team will pitch in and we’ll rebuild it together.”
Photograph by Wyatt McSpadden
