SHORTLY before 5.30pm on 22 December 1977, Arthur Winden, the licensee of the Moulin de Lecq Inn, heard a crackling noise.
When he and electrician Alan Dooks, who were working outside the pub, turned to investigate the sound they saw smoke billowing across the road.
The neighbouring property, Caesar’s Palace, one of Jersey’s most popular entertainment venues, was ablaze in what would turn out to be the Island’s worst fire for six years.
By the time the fire service arrived at 5.42pm, nine minutes after the alarm was raised, part of the roof of the Grève de Lecq venue had caved in and the blaze was already out of control.
PC John de la Haye, one of the first to arrive, described sparks being showered into the sea several hundred yards away. He said that the road in front of the building was impassable because of the heat and smoke while another eye-witness said flames were shooting hundreds of feet into the air.
John Larkin, a JEP delivery driver who was on his rounds, described the scene. “It was a firework display,” he said. “Flames were belching from the building about 30ft to 40ft into the air and there were all sorts of explosions.”
One fireman narrowly escaped serious injury when the rail on which his ladder was leaning collapsed and he half fell, half slithered to the ground.
Firefighters were hampered in their efforts to tackle the inferno by the shortage of water and the wooden structure of the ageing venue itself. Forced to pump water up from a small stream near the Moulin de Lecq there was little they could do to prevent flames gutting the old building. Only the small, newer cabaret area was left.
During the summer months, Caesar’s Palace was packed with visitors every night, but at the time of the fire it was closed for the winter.
It was not unoccupied, though. Mrs Ines Correia (65), mother of venue manager Henrique, was alone in the building when it caught fire. Her husband and son had left half an hour earlier to collect Henrique’s wife from work. When Henrique returned, the building, which was his home containing all his possessions, was like a furnace and his mother, who had come with his father to visit for Christmas, was sitting in shock in the Grève de Lecq Hotel opposite. “All I have left is the clothes I’m standing up in. Everything is gone,” he said.
The sudden and disastrous blaze was a blow not only to the venue’s owners, the Modern Hotel Group, and staff, but also to the Island’s tourism industry. The devastation was such that Caesar’s Palace remained closed for the following year and the 1978 visitor season went without the popular cabaret show.
But the venue would rise from the ashes. Following a refurbishment costing more than a quarter of a million pounds, which included flying in statues and marble lions from Italy, the cabaret reopened in 1979 with a sumptuous Hollywood-themed production, produced by Dick Ray. Audiences could also benefit from a bigger stage and what was described as the most sophisticated lighting and sound system in the Channel Islands.
