Gatecrasher Nottingham was significantly damaged by smoke last week after a serious fire broke out in the kitchen of a nearby restaurant. 50 fire-fighters were needed to tackle the blaze, which happened at the Soulville Steakhouse at 9pm on Wednesday February 18th.

Fire chief Steve Jenkins told the BBC blaze was a ‘very intense, hot fire with thick black smoke’ and praised his officers for tackling it efficiently. “It was a particularly hot fire and we have had a lot of firefighters wearing breathing apparatus because of very thick smoke,” he told the Nottingham Evening News. “I think they have done an excellent job, it could have been significantly worse. They managed to prevent the fire spreading to the nightclub.”

Gatecrasher’s narrow escape came less than two years after the superclub organisation’s Sheffield headquarters Gatecrasher One was burned to the ground when a fire broke out inside the premises on a Monday afternoon in June, 2007. Cops and firemen closed off numerous streets around the city centre club as a giant column of smoke dominated the skyline, gutting the iconic trance venue.

“We are extremely concerned at the rate the building went up – within minutes of us receiving the 999 call the entire building was heavily involved in fire,” chief fire man Dave Kiddy told the Sheffield Star at the time. “There was the potential, if the club had been open at the time, for this to have been a disaster with the speed at which the fire developed. It was so rapid,” he added.