As he approached the restaurant, it suddenly became very hard to see the road.

"I saw the smoke and thought it was dust on the road," Dougherty said.

In fact, it was smoke from the café, which was engulfed in flames.

"Right away you think, ‘Has anyone been hurt?’" Dougherty said of his reaction. "Then I saw everybody standing there, [General Manager] Bob McCarthy and [baker] Kelly McCarthy and all the waiters and waitresses and they were all OK. They reassured me right away.

"Can you imagine if the flame went up in someone’s face? You hear about these things, so thank goodness there wasn’t even one burn. It’s just being in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time. It changes people’s lives."

Mountainside is an organization dedicated to changing people’s lives in a positive way. The Canaan lodge is a treatment center for men and women trying to break a dependency on cigarettes, drugs or alcohol.

"The restaurant is an important part of our treatment program," Dougherty explained. "It’s the next step for somebody when they leave treatment, dealing with a job, with work, with people issues."

The eatery is popular with diners who live here and who stop as they pass through town on Route 7. Anthony Deak goes there twice a month from his home in Bridgewater to meet a group of retired friends. They had just finished breakfast last Friday when the fire started.

"There were six or seven people in the restaurant," Deak recalled. "I was at the cashier’s paying and I was facing the door to the kitchen when I heard a ‘poof.’ And all of a sudden the whole back of the kitchen was on fire. It’s an old, old building and it happened so quick. Then a girl came running out of the kitchen saying, ‘Get out! The kitchen’s on fire!’ People didn’t believe her at first and there were several elderly people there. But they finally got them out."

McCarthy, the general manager, was in the kitchen near the stove with his wife, Kelly, and one other employee.

"We saw a minor explosion, kind of a big poof underneath the stove," he said. "Flames shot out about six feet and then moved 15 feet up the wall, but they were gone immediately. We went outside to shut the gas off and that’s when we saw the smoke coming out of the back of the building, right at the roof line by the kitchen. I told my wife to get everybody out and we turned off the gas. We didn’t want a bigger boom than the one we’d already seen. That was enough to scare us."

It was the gas itself that was the culprit, according to state fire marshals.

"The fire investigation has led us to believe it had something to do with the propane and it appears accidental in nature," said Sgt. Scott Llewellyn of the Department of Safety at the state fire marshal’s office.

Firefighters quickly converged on the scene from Falls Village, Canaan and Cornwall after McCarthy called 911. The Lakeville Hose Company was held in quarters on standby.

"Within 15 minutes there must have been 10 trucks and 40 people there," McCarthy said. "They saved the majority of the building. The main portion of the fire went up the back wall of the kitchen and above the hood ventilation system. That whole area was heavily burned."

Water was pumped into the dining room to keep it from igniting. The firefighters had to cut holes in several spots in the roof to get the water in.

"One of the firefighters was saying there were three or four different roof lines because the building had been added to so many times," McCarthy said. "The interior of the kitchen didn’t burn. The fire mainly burned behind the fire wall behind the cooking system. A good portion of our cooking equipment did get saved. It looks like a lot of stuff will be saved, thanks to the fire department."

What was saved are thousands of dollars worth of edibles.

"We just got in a $2,000 food order Thursday," McCarthy said, estimating that the total loss of comestibles was about $5,000.

Mountainside is insured and Dougherty, McCarthy and people in the community hope to get the café up and running as soon as possible.

"The repairs are doable, I’ve been told," Dougherty said. "The fire did quite a bit of damage but we’re insured and we’re in OK shape. The problem is going to be finding a contractor. We’ve talked to some people and they’re tied up for months. Once we get an OK from the insurance company we want to get some people in there and do the work and open in a couple months."

The small rental cabins behind the café will continue to be rented out in the meantime.

"We had to cancel all our reservations for last weekend and refund a lot of money," McCarthy said. "We hope to be up and running for the coming weekend. We’re booked solid. We have quite a bit of activity between the leaf peepers and people coming to Lime Rock Park. August and October are our busiest months."

The race track at Lime Rock Park has hired the café staff to help out with food service during this weekend’s NASCAR races. Any other companies or groups who would like to hire temporary staff should call Mountainside in Canaan.

The fire was traumatic for many of the retaurant workers.

"It was a big emotional thing for them to go through," Dougherty said. "The café is the most important part of their lives now. But they’ve been real troopers. The good comes out in people, I find, with things like this. We’ll figure out what they’ll be doing [until the restaurant is open again.] We have our outreach program, for example. We go to schools, including Housatonic Valley Regional High School, and have young people talking to young people about staying away from cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. So now we have more people to go to the schools."

The idea of not rebuilding or of selling out is not an option.