Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 06/03) - Firefighters entered a smoky restaurant on Monday afternoon and returned with the worst coffee you've ever seen.

Linda Tourangeau was at her office on Franklin Avenue when she noticed a strong smell of smoke coming from another part of the building. She called the fire department.

When firefighters arrived, the smell of smoke was pungent from blocks away.

They entered Our Place restaurant and returned quickly with a smoking, shrivelled pot full of old sludgy coffee. The restaurant had been closed since Saturday, and someone had forgot to switch off the coffee maker.

"It's lucky someone picked up on the smell and odour, said Lieut. Chucker Dewar. "It could have turned into a serious situation."

Dewar was told the pot was inflammable. So back at the fire department, they torched the thing to see if it would ignite. It did.

But the pot was still safer than most -- designed with a metal bottom, so the plastic collapses into itself when heated instead of dripping hot material all around it.