Investigations are underway to determine the exact cause of a fire at the Canberra Services Club today.<\/p>\n
Fire crews were called to the Barton venue about 11:30am, and fought to contain the blaze as smoke and flames rose from air conditioning vents on the roof.<\/p>\n
The club and a neighbouring building were evacuated, with two people taken to hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.<\/p>\n
It is a major blow for the club, which moved to Barton after its original building next to Manuka Oval was gutted by fire in 2011.<\/p>\n
In a statement on its Facebook account, the Canberra Services Club said it would be closed “until further notice” while it assessed the damage and ensured it was safe to reopen.<\/p>\n
Canberra Services Club vice-president David Spouse said the fire started when a malfunction in one of the deep fryers caused it to boil even when it was turned off.<\/p>\n
He said staff attempted to stop it catching fire using a fire extinguisher, which he said briefly appeared to work.<\/p>\n
“But then it zoomed up again and went to the flue above the fryers, and some oil splashed on the floor and flame came up from there,” Mr Spouse said.<\/p>\n
“There was three of us \u2014 myself and two staff members, and two young tradies who were hoping to have a steak, which didn’t happen.”<\/p>\n
Five people \u2014 two patrons and three staff members \u2014 were evacuated from the Canberra Services Club. (ABC News: Joel Wilson)<\/p>\n
ACT Fire and Rescue Superintendent Jim Walsh said at the height of the blaze there were about 30 firefighters involved in fighting it.<\/p>\n
He said the fire was contained to the Canberra Services Club, but due to heavy smoke the building next door was also evacuated.<\/p>\n
“On arrival the fire was well involved with the building, with flames coming out of various air conditioning vents on the ceiling,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Superintendent Walsh said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve ultimately had five pumping appliances attending the incident, two aerial appliances, and some breathing apparatus support vehicles as well.<\/p>\n
“[And] there’s been two people who’ve been taken to hospital as a precautionary measure, just to ensure they didn’t suffer any smoke inhalation or inhale any other substances.”<\/p>\n
‘Pretty severe’ damage![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/fe3e303fa8788d05c240d6875fb41173\")
<\/p>\n
Canberra Services Club vice-president David Spouse says the damage caused by the fire is likely quite extensive. (ABC News: Joel Wilson)<\/p>\n
Mr Spouse said the blaze was “all a bit of a haze”.<\/p>\n
“[I’m] pretty shaken because, you know, I’ve never been involved in something like that before,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s sort of confronting when you see a fire, and a fire that you can see is getting out of control.<\/p>\n
“But everyone is sort of fit and healthy, thank goodness.”<\/p>\n
He said he didn’t yet know the extent of the damage, but it was likely very extensive.<\/p>\n
“All of the windows at the back have blown out, there was a large bang, [and] there appears to be damage on the side to the roof,” Mr Spouse said.<\/p>\n
“I’m assuming that the amount of water that you have to pour on to address a fire of this sort means there’s going to be a lot of damage \u2014 and it’s an old 1960’s building, so who knows.<\/p>\n
“And inside, we’re not allowed to go in there so we don’t know, but I’m assuming it’s going to be pretty severe.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Investigations are underway to determine the exact cause of a fire at the Canberra Services Club today. Fire…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":128688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4746,22608,4740,78570,7335,4745,78569,29495,462,78574,3534,890,78573,5025,13120,5022,18050,728,12649,50,78572,5677,23492,6831,78571],"class_list":{"0":"post-128687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-act","9":"tag-agency","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-barton","12":"tag-blaze","13":"tag-canberra","14":"tag-canberra-services-club","15":"tag-cause","16":"tag-club","17":"tag-deep-fryer","18":"tag-emergency","19":"tag-esa","20":"tag-evacuate","21":"tag-fire","22":"tag-flames","23":"tag-investigation","24":"tag-kitchen","25":"tag-local-news","26":"tag-local-stories","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-patrons","29":"tag-services","30":"tag-smoke","31":"tag-staff","32":"tag-vanue"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114992425483462686","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}