Owners fined after fireball ripped through Braddon restaurant

The operators of a Canberra restaurant have been fined almost $50,000 in the ACT Magistrates Court after an aerosol can exploded in their kitchen.

On the eve of Australia Day in 2011 an apprentice chef at Delissio restaurant in Braddon was placed into an induced coma and flown to Sydney for emergency treatment after a can of butane gas exploded near his face.

The court heard in the holiday rush someone had placed the gas canisters under the pizza oven rather than in the designated area.

Over a year later owners Stephen Fitzsimmons and Jeremy Grobben pleaded guilty to charges of failing to comply with their safety duties, but asked Chief Magistrate Lorraine Walker to consider that their workers should have used a level of commonsense.

But in Monday's sentencing Chief Magistrate Walker told the men that their negligence was in part failing to realise that not everyone has the same level of commonsense.

The men were each fined $24,000.

Source: ABC News, 1 July 2013