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Four brothers watched helplessly as a fire tore through their Astoria doughnut shop early yesterday and reduced their dreams to twisted metal and broken glass.
The four-alarm fire, which started at 3:15 a.m., destroyed three businesses - Twin Donuts, Thirty Two coffee shop and Cohen's Fashion Optical - along a commercial strip on 31st Street between Ditmars Boulevard and 23rd Avenue. A nearby McDonald's and a copy store had water, smoke and roof damage.
M.R. Islam, 32, one of the brothers, had left the store less than two hours earlier when he received a call from Chester Marrimer, 66, a cook at Twin Donuts, telling him the shop was in flames.
"All of a sudden, there was smoke coming out of the vents," said Marrimer, who was about to prepare breakfast. "I went to the backyard to see what was burning, because I thought maybe it was coming from somewhere else. Then I saw the roof was on fire."
Marrimer called 911 and his bosses, who rushed over.
Islam said that he, his brothers - Mohammed Eashin, 31, R. Ansari, 36, and Aslamp Ansari, 34 - and their uncles invested $200,000 to open the restaurant in 1995.
Standing on the sidewalk near their burned-out shop, the brothers said they were determined to reopen within six months.
"When you put five fingers together, you can make a punch," Eashin said. "When you make a punch, you can hit. That's the way we work."
Throughout the morning, customers passed by and patted the brothers on the shoulders.
"We feel sorry for them because they worked so hard," said Bipin Mehta, 58, a clerk at a nearby convenience store.
Tahseen Meraj, the owner of Copycom copy shop, said that when he first saw the flames in the middle of the block, he thought his entire store had been destroyed.
After the commotion subsided, he saw that his store had only minor damage.
"I just said, 'Thank God, we're saved,'" he said.
Peter Miller, 60, who owns the McDonald's, hopes to reopen his restaurant in two months.
"We're going to put it back together. There's not much you can do," he said.
A Fire Department spokesman said that 39 units responded to the fire. Nineteen people, including 18 firefighters, suffered minor injuries and were taken to local hospitals, according to the spokesman. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the fire.
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