Associated supermarket (Photo via Foursquare)
By Sabina Mollot
Now those are some hot peppers!
On Monday, firefighters put out a fire at the Associated supermarket in Stuyvesant Town that had started in the produce section’s pepper display.
Store manager Norman Quintanilla told Town & Village it was a small fire, so small in fact that it was snuffed out just using a fire extinguisher. The cause was apparently a burnt wire that had shorted out behind the produce case.
“It was a small, little fire,” said Quintanilla. “Mostly smoke.”
The fire broke out around 3:30 a.m. when the store was closed but an employee who was on duty at the time smelled smoke.
He called the FDNY, and Quintanilla said by the time he got there at 4 a.m., the fire was out. The FDNY had to break the door to gain entry, but by 5 a.m., a worker had arrived to fix the door. Quintanilla said on Tuesday that the only damage to the store was to a four-foot section of the produce case but he said employees have since cleaned it up.
“There was a slight smell, but now it’s gone,” he said.
A spokesperson for the FDNY confirmed that the fire, which was responded to by 30 firefighters, was electrical. The spokesperson added that the fire was actually extinguished before the department’s arrival. Quintanilla noted that the responders checked out the area behind produce section to make sure it wasn’t smoldering anywhere else.
Tagged: Associated supermarket, east 14th street, FDNY, fire, stuyvesant town
