Massage chair catches fire at Mall of New Hampshire
Dec. 5—Several businesses could not open at the Mall of New Hampshire Sunday after a malfunctioning massage chair caught fire earlier in the morning causing smoke and water damage.
The businesses included Lok'd Room Escape and The Village Idiotz, which specializes in Christmas decor. All restaurants needed to be inspected by the Health Department before reopening.
A crew from Servicemaster Restore continued to bring in fans and other equipment Sunday afternoon as part of the cleanup.
Firefighters were called to the building at 1500 S. Willow St. around 1:25 a.m. The building's sprinklers extinguished most of the blaze near the food court, but the fire caused smoke and water damage, according to Manchester fire Battalion Chief David Flurey.
"Being such a big and open space, the issue of getting the smoke out of the mall itself was the real issue," he said.
Best Buy blocked off its interior entrance and worked to clean up a small section in the rear of the store.
As of 1:30 p.m. most restaurants in the food court remained closed, including Auntie Anne's Arby's, Charleys Philly Steaks, Dunkin', Sbarro, Master Wok, Sarku Japan and Ruby Thai Kitchen.
"Due to last night's fire at the Mall of NH, ALL food service establishments will be closed for cleaning and will reopen once inspected," a sign at Dunkin' read.
Buffalo Wild Wings also remained closed.
"We anticipate opening later today," said a sign on the door.
The fire was contained to the one chair.
"There were surveillance cameras that caught the whole thing," Flurey said. "You can see it on the surveillance video that it was isolated to that one chair, which led us to believe it was a malfunction to the chair itself."
No one was injured.
"The sprinkler system did its job," Flurey said.
The mall is owned by Simon Property Group. Representatives from the company did not return a request for comment from the Union Leader on Sunday.
