Breaking: Fire Forces Evacuation of Whole Foods Bowery [Updated]

Shortly before 5 pm this evening, a fire sparked inside the Whole Foods on the Bowery. Crowds are now gathered outside the supermarket while firefighters resolve the situation. We are told that the alarms sounded, sprinklers promptly activated, and customers forced to drop their baskets to be escorted out.

UPDATE 8:24 pm: Whole Foods confirms that the fire was caused near the chicken rotisserie ovens, and that no one was injured in the incident. They will reportedly reopen within the hour.

Here was some of the Twitter conversation surrounding the incident from patrons inside the Whole Foods:

Fire in whole foods. Not a single person including us took the alarms seriously until the sprinklers came on… twitter.com/jameschororos/…

— James Chororos (@jameschororos) January 13, 2013

Fire at #whole foods Bowery. Alarms go off everyone continues to look at phones. Evacuate. Haven’t told all those people waiting in line

— jodyculkin (@jodyculkin) January 13, 2013

Was about to pay for a ton of groceries at Whole Foods.. then got evacuated for a fire $@#! Freshdirect is starting to look appealing.

— Joe Stanco (@multislacker) January 13, 2013

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