Fire forces Midtown Whole Foods to evacuate temporarily

Roughly 70 employees and 30 shoppers were evacuated from a Midtown Whole Foods on Thursday morning following a small fire in the pizza oven.

Atlanta firefighters received the 911 call around 9:30 a.m. and arrived minutes later to find the fire had already been extinguished, Battalion Chief Michael Roman said. Light smoke was present in the Ponce De Leon Avenue grocery store, but no injuries were reported and everyone inside the building was safely evacuated, he added.

“The management did well by identifying the problem and executing the need for 911 and fire services,” Roman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the scene. “We were able to arrive within minutes and get on and on top of the situation right away.”

Dozens of people were evacuated from a Midtown Whole Foods grocery store after a small fire broke out in a pizza oven.(John Spink/AJC)

He said fire investigators determined there had been an electrical issue with the exhaust system.

“Your oven vent system is designed to go through the building to the roof exterior to exhaust all the heat and smoke, and there was a failure in that system,” Roman said. “The fan failed, so that’s the cause of the issue — why they saw the smoke banked down, that kind of thing.”