Smoke filled the AJ’s kitchen on Sept. 14 when a small electrical fire broke out around 7 a.m. from an overheated outlet. 

“The entire outlet was on fire, like shooting fireballs and stuff,” said Madisyn Vanderpool, the AJ’s kitchen manager who discovered the fire. “Everything was burnt all the way to the floor.”

The fire started shortly after Vanderpool plugged in the kitchen’s chest cooler, which had been thawing overnight, according to Metz Retail Manager Paul Bowman.

“I noticed the kitchen was really hazy and everything,” Vanderpool said. “It smelled like burnt wiring.”

Bowman said he helped Vanderpool move the cooler to find out where the smoke was coming from.

“When we moved it, the whole outlet itself was charred black,” Bowman said. “I grabbed something and pulled the plug out so that way it wasn’t making it worse. The plug was charred off, melting.”

Bowman said the flames quickly died down, but he immediately called security and maintenance. Maintenance staff shut off the breaker for the outlet, he said, also shutting off the switch for the ice cream cooler outlet in the process. 

The kitchen was closed for breakfast while maintenance staff replaced the outlet and the AJ’s team brought a different chest cooler from storage. 

“It’s too bad that it got in the way of a normal day at AJ’s,” senior and AJ’s employee Truman Kjos said.

Vanderpool said that the kitchen had been experiencing some smaller electrical issues in the past few weeks, but this was the only time they have resulted in flames. 

“They think it was just the outlet itself rather than the wiring,” Bowman said. “If it was the wiring, they’d have to get in the floor and replace all of that, which wouldn’t be too difficult. Wiring is easy enough. But we haven’t had any issues since, so they believe it was just the outlet.”

The kitchen reopened around 10 a.m., according to Bowman, after maintenance turned the circuit breaker back on and the kitchen staff could use the flat tops and the new chest cooler. 

“They fixed it within an hour or so,” Bowman said. “We just had the kitchen running with a different outlet. Everything was safe, and they handled it very well.”