Champagne Helps Wedding Party Through Fire Scrape

A couple’s wedding almost went up in smoke Sunday morning in a fire that injured one man and caused $100,000 damage to a Pacific Beach apartment building.

Blaise Granatowski, 34, of 1550 Hornblend St., was listed in good condition at UCSD Medical Center on Sunday with burns covering 20% of his back, a hospital spokeswoman said.

In the apartment next door, Andrea Letourneau--soon to be Andrea Flodin--was ironing her wedding dress when the blaze broke out about 7 a.m. She grabbed the dress, scooped up her purse, and escaped the fire with her mother, in whose apartment she was staying, groom Tim Flodin said.

But two of the ushers’ tuxedos, Letourneau’s mother’s dress and some of the wedding accessories were damaged by smoke and soot.

To the rescue of the wedding came an unidentified man who opened his dry-cleaning business and repaired the damage to the tuxedos.

“I don’t know the name of the guy that did it,” Flodin said. “It was a neighbor, a friendly neighbor being friendly and cordial and helping out people in need in Pacific Beach,” said Flodin, who along with his bride is a Las Vegas resident. Letourneau and her mother cleaned the dress and accessories, he added.

The couple’s 11 a.m. wedding at the Catamaran Resort Hotel was delayed for 2 1/2 hours when the minister inexplicably failed to show up. Wedding guests drank champagne while waiting for a substitute minister to arrive to perform the Lutheran service.

“We knew all along it was going to happen,” a safely married Flodin said Sunday night. “This is something to make us stronger, make us closer.”

The blaze caused $75,000 damage to the apartment building and $25,000 damage to its contents, Fire Department spokeswoman Ida Cheney said.

Metro Arson Strike Team investigators determined that smoking materials ignited the fire in a couch in Granatowski’s apartment.