Fires damaged or destroyed hundreds of businesses and homes across the Hampton Roads region last year.
Rebuilding after that kind of loss can take time.
The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press reached out to several people who experienced a fire in 2025 to check on their recovery. Here’s how they described the process.
A popular restaurant rebuilds
The morning of Feb. 5, a two-alarm fire ripped through Crudo Nudo, a popular Spanish tapas restaurant along 21st Street in Norfolk’s Ghent neighborhood.
Chef and owner Eric Nelson has spent much of the past year rebuilding. He said the restaurant’s kitchen was completely burned out, and smoke damaged much of the remainder of the location. The roof was also damaged. In order to rebuild, he said the entire building was stripped down to the walls.
“They had to take it down to basically nothing,” said Nelson, who has operated Crudo Nudo for more than eight years.
Construction, too, has been an ordeal due to President Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Nelson said estimates for some fixes would increase mid-quote due to new steel or aluminum tariffs.
“Things have tripled expense-wise,” Nelson said.
Nelson also said difficulties with fire insurance convinced him to increase coverage on his other business.
Even so, Nelson said reconstruction has progressed, and the community has shown up to support the business — a GoFundMe effort raised more than $14,000.
The exact cause of the fire is still unknown, and Nelson suspects some kind of electrical issue. According to the Norfolk Fire Department, among the hundreds of fire calls that crews responded to between January to November were 158 vehicle fires, 306 structure fires and 353 outside and brush fires.
Nelson hopes to reopen in either January or, perhaps poetically, on Feb. 5.
“We’re ready to reopen and a lot of people are ready for us to reopen,” Nelson said.
Progress on the rebuild can be seen on Crudo Nudo’s Instagram page.
— Trevor Metcalfe
Suspected arson
Portsmouth firefighters responded to 84 structure fires from January through November, which includes 64 residential buildings and seven commercial properties.
One of those fires includes potential arson that put Portsmouth resident, tattoo artist and piercer Daniel Steele out of business for several months — just one month after opening his shop, Dan the Piercing Man Tattoo & Body Piercing, in the Town and Country Shopping Center on George Washington Highway.
Steele opened the shop in mid-April after spending years in the tattoo and piercing industry. So when he received an early morning call from the fire marshal less than a month later, he thought it was a joke.
“I even asked him. I said, ‘Are you joking,’” Steele said. “Showed up 10 minutes later, and the place was — I had never seen anything like it.”
Steele said the fire marshal told him the shop went up in flames after someone seemingly threw beer bottles filled with gasoline through a window. The bottles were taken as evidence, but nothing came of it, he added. And at the time, Steele didn’t have outside surveillance cameras, and cameras located inside melted from the fire, making the potential arson investigation more difficult.
Portsmouth Fire Department said the fire was “intentionally set,” but the suspected arson investigation remains open pending further evidence or witness accounts. No charges have been filed.
The destructive fire put Steele out of business for several months, but with the help of the property owner and some donations, the shop was back open in mid-September.
Damages and losses included essential equipment such as a specialized medical-grade piercing chair, waiting room chairs, laptop and toolbox. The roughly 1,500-square-foot shop also suffered water damage and smoke damage that resulted in some drywall removed and plumbing repairs. Ceiling lights also melted from the heat. Sentimental items couldn’t be replaced.
Steele said he discovered after the fire that he only had liability business insurance, meaning he was on the hook for the damages. He talked to the property owner, who decided to cover the expenses out-of-pocket to avoid making a claim to his insurance that would spike his insurance premiums. He also excused Steele’s lease payment during the recovery, and Steele said $1,500 in donations from a GoFundMe campaign helped cover some of his estimated $5,000 in recovery expenses.
“I was very excited how fast he got it looking nice,” Steele said of the shopping center’s property owner.
During the rebuilding process, Steele worked to scrub walls, scape up flooring and demolish walls — all while keeping a positive outlook.
“It felt like starting over from nothing,” Steele said. “But I’m very happy with how things have come out. The shop looks even nicer than it did before.”
— Natalie Anderson
A double loss
Tattoo artist and muralist Corinna Sayward was hit with a double-whammy in 2025. In August, a fire destroyed all of her equipment at Seven Cities Tattoo Company, where she worked near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. A few months later, her car caught on fire while driving on a highway in Connecticut. She was traveling home after participating as a guest artist at another studio. Her newly replaced tattoo equipment and other personal items burned up inside the vehicle.
“It’s been a really long year,” she said.
Despite the two back-to-back tragedies, Sayward, 29, quickly rebounded thanks to support from fellow artists in the local community.
“I lost what I had lost before again, but I also lost my wardrobe and a lot of art supplies,” she said. “When I got home, people from the creative community were bringing clothing from their own closet.”
Reflecting back on the two fires, she maintains a positive outlook and realizes the catastrophes brought out her strengths.
“I can react quickly to situations that are really serious,” she said.
Sayward grew up in New England and has been living in the Hampton Roads area for about eight years. Outside of her work, she has hosted pop-up art shows to raise money for several nonprofits and volunteered in Virginia Beach’s ViBe Creative District and Norfolk’s NEON District.
After the first fire at the studio, she was able to use donations received from a GoFundMe fundraiser to buy new tattoo equipment. Following the car fire, she received another outpouring of support from fellow tattoo artists to replace those items. Since then, Sayward has participated at tattoo conventions and held a solo art exhibition in the ViBe.
She currently designs and creates custom tattoos at Studio Evolve near Mount Trashmore and bought a Subaru, which she always wanted.
“At the end of the day, I feel like so much good has come out of the year,” she said. “I pushed through and still decided to live life.”
— Stacy Parker
Displaced overnight
The Peninsula has seen roughly 1,200 fires from January to November this year, including nearly 700 in Newport News and more than 500 in Hampton.
One of the most destructive fires came in October when an overnight blaze at Magruder Run Apartments complex in Hampton damaged 12 apartments and displaced at least 33 residents.
The American Red Cross was called in to respond to the fire, providing emergency resources like a place to stay, money to replace belongings or get a meal or clothing, according to Regional Disaster Officer Katie Niehoff. However, she said the assistance doesn’t stop once the fire is put out.
“All of the people that were impacted in that fire in Hampton, after that immediate assistance, we also then have case workers that follow up with them,” Niehoff said. “As long as that person is requesting and needing anything from the Red Cross, we stay with them, so there’s no real timeline.”
That partnership includes connecting people to local resources such as spiritual centers, food shelves and housing centers, Niehoff said. In the roughly two months since the fire, all of the cases from the apartment fire have been closed, which she said signaled all of their needs have been met.
She added the American Red Cross will always be there to assist the community. However, Niehoff said fires ramp up during the winter as heaters, candles and holiday lights become more popular, and people should be diligent in their homes with items like working smoke detectors to prevent future disasters.
“It’s really important for us to work with our local partners so that we can make sure we’re really giving people that are impacted by a disaster all the resources the community has available,” Niehoff said.
— Devlin Epding
