AT 4am this Tuesday morning, Shafia Malak and her husband got a call. Their Underwood business, Smashhh Burgers, was on fire.
It would turn out to be the first of two “suspicious” fires in as many days, according to police.
Acai Nation, another food truck on the same commercial premises, was set alight on the following morning on 1 October, just after 1am. No one was injured in either fire, but Ms Malak said the Smashhh Burgers food truck was blackened to ash.
“We were sent the photos of what the business looked like, but seeing it in person, we just felt absolutely devastated, and had this pit feeling in our stomach,” Ms Malak said.
“It’s our livelihood, all our savings went into building something for the community.”
Two firetrucks responded to the first fire on 30 September and put the flames out in under 40 minutes, a spokesperson for the Queensland Fire Department said.
Police, who say the fire began in a storage unit before spreading to the attached Smashhh Burgers food truck, attended the scene that morning at around 9am.
Ms Malak said she believed the fire was a targeted attack, not an accident.
Once police left the scene, at around 1.30pm that day, the community got to work.
“We’ve pretty much had everybody in the community just waiting around to offer their support and help out with the clean up,” Ms Malak said.
“So many businesses have reached out all around us to show their camaraderie. A lot of people have brought us lunch, coffee, or offered us services like clean-up crews. It was just amazing the support we’ve received from the community and a huge testament to the community we built.”
The evening of the fire, Smashhh Burgers staff loaded the burned food truck onto a trailer to be towed away.
Ms Malak said it was disturbing and uncomfortable to look at their beloved business in ruins.
Early the next morning, at around 1.30am, a staff member at a neighbouring mechanic shop heard a loud bang, followed by the scent of fuel.
Another food truck, Acai Nation, was up in flames.
Ms Malak’s husband, who was driving home from the Smashhh Burgers site when he received the phone call that Acai Nation was on fire, immediately turned around to help with the familiar scene.
Ms Malak said security footage of the Acai Nation attack showed an offender or offenders had waited across the street before lighting the truck on fire. And so the clean-up process began again, this time for Acai Nation.
Ms Malak said she was in regular contact with Smashhh Burgers staff, who continued to check in with each other.
“We’re going to get together early next week, but everybody’s just at a loss, in shock and feeling numb,” she said.
“It’s surreal that this has happened. Our staff are the reason we are able to do what we do every day, and they’re very much part of the community work we made an effort to be a part of.”
Smashhh Burgers only opened its door last year in 2024 after rebranding from Mocky’s Burgers & Mocktails.
On 23 September, one week before the fire, Smashhh Burgers won the Outstanding New Business Award at the 2025 Logan City Local Business Awards.
Smashhh Burgers are now closed for the foreseeable future.
Ms Malak said it was too soon to know how the business would rebrand and move forward from the fire.
“In terms of rebuilding, we’re just going to take some time off to figure out, like, what we’d like to do next,” Ms Malak said.
“What that will look like, whether we move forward with a shopfront or we just take a break for a while, it’s hard to know there’s a few different discussions happening at the moment.
“We’ve tried our best to make sure we keep it positive, rather than focus on what’s actually happened and give a lot of air time to somebody who’s just decided to take away our livelihood.”
