Update: Police say the store will be closed for two to five days because of the damage

NORTH BRUNSWICK – Attention Walmart shoppers: There is a fire. Please leave the store.

That was the unusual message that dozens of people in North Brunswick heard today after a fire broke out on a loading dock of the chain retail store just after 3 p.m., shrouding a Route 1 strip-mall in a cloud of smoke and forcing many shoppers and employees to head out to the parking lot. Lieutenant John Haas of the North Brunswick Police Department said there were no reports of injuries.

"I thought I was hearing things" when an employee told her to evacuate, said Suzanne MacDougall, who was looking for dog food at the store but instead found a fire.

"Everybody sort of sauntered out, because they didn't really take it seriously," said McDougall.

Then an employee at the store behind a register yelled "Fire, fire!" and the last-minute checkouts stopped as people calmly but quickly left the building, MacDougall said.

The fire broke out when a crew was doing routine maintenance work in the back of the store, saw Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Ashley Hardie. Hardie couldn't say when the store would be back open. In a community alert, the police department said that the store would be closed for two to five days.

Karen Buda, who was mingling in the parking lot an hour after the fire broke out, said that she didn't see any smoke in the store, but she still listened when they were told to leave.

"I don't want to find out the hard way that I should have listened," said Buda, who was shopping for 110 SPF sunscreen for her son.

The smoke was contained to the back of the building. A fireman could be seen wielding a power tool over what appeared to be a tractor trailer in a back parking lot, near the loading dock. A swath of the outside of the building was charred.

Walmart managers told their employees not to speak to the media that assembled. One employee, who inhaled some smoke, said that he saw white smoke that turned cream-colored then black. Dozens of employees mingled in the parking lot until they were told by managers that they could leave.

Authorities said they're still not sure what caused the blaze. Firefighters were going in and out of the building within an hour of the first reports of a fire.

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