‘We will rebuild’: Fire rips through well-known Stanly County seafood restaurant

STANLY COUNTY, N.C. — Firefighters battled a large multi-alarm fire at a popular seafood restaurant in Stanly County Wednesday morning.

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Firefighters battle multi-alarm fire at restaurant in Stanly County

Crews first reported the fire around 7:45 a.m. at Jay’s Seafood on Stony Gap Road near Albemarle. The first units arrived within eight minutes, officials said.

Fifteen departments responded from Stanly, Cabarrus, and Montgomery counties. Chopper 9 flew over the scene just before noon where flames could still be seen coming from the structure.

‘We will rebuild’

The owner said he doesn’t know how it could have started at the restaurant that has been around since 1956.

“We have no idea because, we’re just open Thursday through Sunday and when we leave here, we turn everything off, breakers, electricity, because I’ve always been afraid we would have something like this,” said Ned Stallings, owner.

Stalling’s family took over the business in 1967 and he has been working there ever since. He planned to hand it down to his son, John Stallings, who is the manager.

“It was sad and terrible because that’s all we do is this fish house,” John Stallings said. “And I didn’t like seeing it like that. It hadn’t really sunk in really good yet, but we going to get it fixed.”

The family said they got the call Wednesday morning and didn’t know how bad it was until they got to their business.

However, by the afternoon, they were already working to fix it.

“We will rebuild as soon as everybody gets everything out,” Ned Stallings said. “We’ll start tearing stuff out. Taking it to a landfill. We’ve already talked to a contractor about rebuilding.”

The Stallings family also owns Jay’s Downtowner Restaurant in downtown Albemarle.

They hope customers will go there to support them until the restaurant can be rebuilt, which they think will take months.

It took about 90 firefighters just over three hours to control.

There were no reported injuries.

It is unclear how the fire began.

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