Dry cleaner catches fire, forces several shops to close due to smoke

The smell of smoke, burnt metal and melted glass lingered as Aura Coppola opened the doors of her frozen yogurt shop hours after the building went up in flames.

Coppola says her teenage daughter was at the shop, Orange Leaf, Wednesday night when she started smelling smoke and realized it was coming from the cleaners next door.

“The owner of the cleaners was here and opened the door and smoke just came pouring out,” Coppola said.

She says her daughter rushed everyone out and closed up the shop.

“It was complete chaos, I don’t know if she saw so much flames but the smoke was so intense. My question…where were the fire alarms?” Coppola said.

Her daughter was rushed to the hospital and given oxygen after breathing in too much smoke.

Two stores down, the owner of Margaritas, Diana Perez, also noticed the clouds of smoke and told dozens of customers to leave and get to safety.

“When something like that is going on, you don’t think about how much you’re loosing, you think about being safe, your customers being safe,” Perez said.

Now, both owners are left with smoke-filled shops, and are slowly putting the pieces back together. The shop owners say they plan to open Friday.

Investigators still have not released a cause of the fire.