A fire that started early this morning in the basement of a shuttered Latin restaurant on the busy corner of Gun Hill Road and Webster Avenue in the Bronx left four businesses closed, three firefighters with minor injuries and investigators searching for answers.

William Oehm, the fire department’s local battalion chief, said they were alerted to the fire at around 7 a.m. He said the blaze began in the basement of Parrilla Criolla, a Latin restaurant right on the corner of Gun Hill Road and Webster Avenue, which was closed and apparently unoccupied at the time.

The fire burned up the multi-layered floor of the restaurant and spread into the walls and the gas line. Because the fire had climbed into the walls, Oehm said firefighters crashed into the second floor windows of the building to stop it from spreading. The second floor houses Samba Lounge, a night club that was just about to re-open under new managers, according to property owner Michael McElhatton.

The restaurant, which hasn’t been open for a few months, McElhatton said, shares a basement with three other businesses — Tax Associates Credit Action Solutions, SMJ Beauty Salon, Rio Nilo Records and a T-Mobile dealer. While firefighters broke the windows of the tax shop, it and the other businesses sustained only minor smoke damage. But gas and power were cut off, leaving the businesses closed for the time being. It’s unclear when the utilities will be restored.

Oehm said three firefighters sustained minor injuries. One may have been admitted to the hospital for smoke inhalation, he said. The others sustained bruises and muscle strains.

[Video: Footage from the fire’s aftermath.]

After receiving calls about the fire, business owners feared the worst, but were relieved to find only minimal damage.

“It could have been worse,” said the owner of Tax Associates Credit Action Solutions, who identified himself as Mr. Waters.

A minister at Union Grove Baptist Church in the South Bronx, Waters said he cried with relief when he saw that his 7-year-old business was mostly intact. “I said, ‘thank you, lord,’ that’s my whole life right there,” he said this morning, the cuffs of his khaki pants wet from standing in the stream of water flowing down Gun Hill Road.

It smelled of smoke, but everything else looked normal inside SMJ Beauty Salon, much to the delight of owner Janice Richards, who said one of her clients called to tell her about the fire this morning. “I’m so happy,” she said about finding her shop relatively undamaged. Unfortunately, she said, Friday and the rest of the weekend are her busiest days and she doesn’t know when the power will be restored.

The other businesses, Rio Nilo Records and the T-Mobile dealer, were both closed.

McElhatton said the first order of business was getting the wreckage cleaned up, securing the building and making “it look presentable.”

He said the owner of Parrilla Criolla “just disappeared” a few months ago. But three weeks back, somebody had rented out the Samba Lounge space, which had also been vacant for some time, McElhatton said, and they were getting ready to re-open the night club in the near future.

At 10 a.m., firefighters were still dousing the smoldering basement with water while cops, business owners and city officials milled about. But half an hour later, the fire trucks dispersed and investigators were inside trying to figure out how a fire had erupted in an unoccupied basement.

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