A fire tore through India Grill and Bar in Royal Palm Beach Sunday night, sending flames across the front of the building and thick smoke pouring from the back before firefighters managed to keep the blaze from spreading to neighboring storefronts. No injuries were reported.
Crews were dispatched around 11:20 p.m. to the restaurant, located in a strip mall on Royal Palm Beach Boulevard just north of Southern Boulevard, according to CBS12. When firefighters arrived, they found flames already visible at the front of the building, with heavy smoke billowing from the rear — a sign that the fire had likely been burning for some time before it was spotted.
Firefighters Contain the Blaze Within Half an Hour
Palm Beach County Fire Rescue said the fire heavily damaged India Grill and Bar but that crews stopped it from spreading to the other businesses sharing the strip mall. The outlet's reporting notes the fire was brought under control roughly 30 minutes after crews were dispatched to the scene.
Even with the fire contained relatively quickly, smoke still made its way into neighboring units, the same report notes. Despite the extent of the damage to the restaurant itself, no injuries were reported among firefighters, employees, or bystanders.
The blaze comes amid a broader pattern: cooking was the leading cause of nonresidential building fires nationwide from 2015 through 2024. The U.S. Fire Administration estimated 33,200 such cooking fires in 2024, about 30% of all nonresidential building fires that year. Those figures cover many types of buildings, not just restaurants, and do not indicate what started the Royal Palm Beach fire, which remains under investigation. Federal fire estimates show cooking’s role in nonresidential fires.
Cause Still Under Investigation
Fire investigators stayed at the scene overnight working to determine how the fire started, and as of the latest reporting, the cause remains under investigation. No further details on the origin of the blaze have been released.
Florida’s fire-safety framework is adopted statewide but enforced by local fire officials, with the State Fire Marshal updating the Florida Fire Prevention Code on a three-year cycle. The eighth edition took effect Dec. 31, 2023. That regulatory structure provides the backdrop for fire-safety oversight of buildings and businesses, but the code itself does not establish how this particular fire began; investigators have not announced a cause. Florida’s State Fire Marshal explains the code and local enforcement.
