Firefighters from three different fire departments were on the scene at a Eunice grocery store for the better part of Monday morning.

In addition to firefighters from Eunice, departments from St. Landry and Acadia parish were on the scene too, to help contain the blaze.

Eunice Fire Chief Michael Arnold says the fire started in the vent of the store’s smokehouse and that they spent almost two hours cutting through the store’s roof in order to completely put the fire out.

“It was hidden in between the rafters in the roof, that’s a flat roof and it was in between the ceiling and the roof inside of those rafters. We proceeded to cut holes in the roof, find the fire.”

The store’s general manager, Gary Francois tells KLFY’s Kellie Brown that he noticed the smoke at about 9 a.m.

“We had what looked like a vent pipe or heated over type of one of our smokers and it caught some ceiling tiles on fire.”

Francois says he and some of the store’s employees tried to put the fire out with a fire extinguisher but couldn’t get it all.

Everyone was evacuated from the store the manager says it was about 20 employees and two customers, there were no reported injuries.

Once firefighters arrived on the scene, they determined that the fire was in the vent system of the smokehouse.

The fire was contained and the store remained untouched.

Eunice Fire Chief Michael Arnold added,

“Thankfully the owner slowed it down with the fire extinguisher before we got here. But we thought we were heading out and then we started investigating there was fire in the ceiling. We didn’t have to look for it, it found us and that’s when we started cutting holes.”

But for those customers worried about when the store will open again, KLFY was told that it is expected to re-open Wednesday.