The smokehouse’s famous blue-and-white exterior. Photo: Google Maps

Like salt in poor Texans’ storm-battered wounds, Franklin Barbecue, the Austin brisket joint where the wait’s so long (seven hours, at times) that not even Kanye West is permitted to cut in line, caught fire early Saturday morning. The restaurant says nobody was injured, but the damage was unfortunately extensive.

BREAKING: @FranklinBbq goes up in flames this morning. Fire crews are worling to put it out. pic.twitter.com/khsbIVMYwG — Tania Ortega (@TaniaonFox7) August 26, 2017

UPDATE FRANKLIN BBQ FIRE: this is the first video shot, we were on scene before fire crews at @FranklinBbq fire. Fire is out, no injuries. pic.twitter.com/40IVjRRNgs — Tania Ortega (@TaniaonFox7) August 26, 2017

Franklin BBQ final, cause accidental, wind blown ember from fire pit ignited combustible surroundings. $200k structure $150 content damage. — Austin Fire Info (@AustinFireInfo) August 26, 2017

The restaurant isn’t sure when its doors will reopen:

A fire in our smokehouse this morning has forced us to close. We are not sure when we will reopen but everyone is safe here. — Franklin Barbecue (@FranklinBbq) August 26, 2017

Owner and James Beard Award–winning pit master Aaron Franklin told the Washington Post that Tropical Storm Harvey was at least partly to blame. “Wind just kind of swept through the smokehouse a lot more than we’re used to and carried an ember from a cooker and caught a wall on fire,” he said. “It went up real quick.”

Big flames aren’t exactly unusual for them, so Franklin says the news didn’t cause an instant freak-out. But he says it quickly became clear they were in trouble once he arrived at the scene. Austin 360 reports the smokehouse in back got “almost completely destroyed,” though by sheer luck, the pits themselves were unharmed, and the dining area in front is “untouched and perfect.” Portions of the roof collapsed, and the walk-in coolers are in bad shape. Franklin says with the amount of fire they create every day, it “was inevitable” something would eventually go wrong, but the upside is, there’s “not as much property loss as most restaurants would have.”

He told Austin 360 they’ll probably have to rebuild the entire smokehouse from the frame up, and estimated they might be able to reopen in a few weeks. The rain coming down right now is no help — they can’t fully assess the damages yet — but he adds, “If there was a part to the building that’s easiest to rebuild, that was the one,” so it’s “not the end of the world.”