By Jon Schuppe and Serena Solomon
DNAinfo Reporters/Producers
MIDTOWN WEST — A smoky trash fire in a storage closet of Williams-Sonoma led to the evacuation of the Time Warner Center mall at Columbus Circle on Wednesday.
Fire department officials said fire was not serious, and no one was injured. But the cause remains under investigation.
As smoke billowed throughout the mall around 3:30 p.m., shoppers dropped their things and rushed from the building. In the basement Whole Foods, shoppers left their loaded carts in the aisles.
Samantha Soto and Cassandra Cuevas, students at nearby Martin Luther King High School, were hanging out near the entrance to Jazz at Lincoln Center when they saw smoke wafting along the ceiling. They ran down stopped escalators to the street, then realized they’d left their backpacks upstairs.
They stood a couple feet from the entrance, watching firefighters gather in the lobby.
“It can’t be that serious or they wouldn’t be letting us stand so close,” Cuevas said.
They were among dozens of customers and employees who waited in the cold for firefighters to let them back in.
That happened at 4:45 p.m., when the jazz music was turned back on and people calmly filed through the revolving doors and continued shopping.
