A huge fire broke out Wednesday morning at the Kosher Kingdom supermarket in Golders Green, London’s heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Firefighters were still working to put out the blaze six hours later.
Metropolitan Police said Wednesday afternoon the fire was not being treated as suspicious and was “believed to have been caused by an electrical fault.” But the incident shook Jewish residents who have been on edge for months amid a string of antisemitic attacks.
“We understand the concern and disruption this incident will have caused to the local community and those living and working in the area,” the police said on X. “We would like to reassure residents that there is no indication of any targeted or deliberate act.”
Officers were called to the scene on Golders Green Road around 7 a.m. by the London Fire Brigade, where they assisted firefighters with road closures and evacuations, said Metropolitan Police.
London Fire Brigade Assistant Commissioner Craig Carter provided an update on the scene at 12:30 p.m., saying that 15 engines and around 100 firefighters “have been tackling the fire at its height, which has affected a ground floor shop and a storage area to the rear, which has partially collapsed.”
He noted that the flats above were not affected but residents were evacuated as a precaution. No injuries have been reported.
“Our specialist Fire Investigators, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police Service, have worked at pace to establish that the circumstances of the fire are not believed to be suspicious and investigations on the cause and origin of the fire are ongoing,” Carter added.
The news that Kosher Kingdom did not appear to be deliberately targeted comes as a relief to Jewish residents. The blaze broke out in the same area where four Hatzola ambulances were torched in March, two Jewish men were stabbed in April and a Jewish man said he was attacked for speaking Hebrew this month.
Rochel Cohen, who lives near the supermarket, is among those whose street has been cordoned off. Her first thought was that the incident was another antisemitic attack, she told JR in a phone interview.
Cohen said she looked out the window around 7 a.m. and saw “just huge plumes of black smoke and we heard all the sirens. And the police have roped off all our roads again.”
That “again,” Cohen said, was because she believed it was the third time in two months that her family was witnessing “crime scenes in our neighborhood.”
“The ambulance fire was just on the next street from us and the stabbing situation was 100 meters down the road from us,” she said.
Prior to the updates from the fire department and police, speculation spread on social media that the fire was electrical, potentially caused by faulty freezers. London has seen an unprecedented heatwave over the last several days, with temperatures soaring over 90 degrees.
Cohen said two of her family members previously worked at Kosher Kingdom. They believed from the outset that there was an electrical fire in the freezers “because it’s exactly from the roof footage that we saw where those freezers are located,” she said.
Nonetheless, another incident in the neighborhood has left her shaken. “It’s just a bit of a nightmare, really,” she said. “It’s all these incidents adding up, and it makes it quite scary, this climate of fear we’re currently in. It’s really oppressive.”
Cohen said she has been traveling to jury service the last several weeks about 10 miles from Golders Green in Wood Green, which has a higher than average crime rate.
“I actually felt safer there than I do walking the street here in Golders Green because I’m constantly turning around, checking what’s going on,” she said. “It’s not a nice feeling.”
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