ST. GEORGE – Fire crews responded to a 911 call at the Red Cliffs mall Saturday morning after a storage room caught fire.
St. George Fire Chief Robert Stoker said the fire department responded to a call from the Christopher & Banks clothing store in the Red Cliffs Mall around 9:30 a.m. He said an employee had come to open the store and had gone into the storage/break room to warm food in a microwave. When she returned she discovered smoke and flames around the appliance and called 911.
“It was either a malfunction with the microwave or an electrical deal around the microwave (that) we’re looking at,” Stoker said.
The flames extended up the wall of the storage room and got into shelving and up into the ceiling. Boxes of inventory also caught fire.
“Once it made into the ceiling area … one of the fire suppression sprinkler heads went off,” Stoker said. “It was able to contain the fire until our arrival.”
The sprinkler worked like it was supposed to, he said, and once firefighters arrived on the scene and determined the fire was extinguished, they shut off the sprinkler system. They replaced the broken sprinkler head and refilled the fire suppression system so it’s back up and running for future use.
Stoker said the overall structural damage from flames, smoke and water was relatively minor and is roughly estimated to be somewhere between $5,000 and $9,000. However, the estimated cost of inventory lost to the fire and damaged by smoke and water is likely to be much higher.
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