More than a dozen businesses were without power Friday morning at The Shops of Prairie Village following a fire in a basement electrical room at the retail complex off Mission Road.
An alarm alerted firefighters to a possible fire at The Shops late Thursday night.
Firefighters from Consolidated Fire District No. 2 were dispatched just after 10 p.m. to 18 On The Mall, an address at the complex near the vacant Macy’s department store.
The call was for a water flow alarm, indicating that water was running through the complex’s sprinkler system, meaning either sprinkler heads had been activated due to a fire or were malfunctioning.
Recorded radio traffic from the first firefighters to arrive on scene indicated crews found a fire, and dispatchers immediately sent additional crews to the scene.
Firefighters from Overland Park, Leawood and Shawnee eventually responded to assist.
Consolidated Fire District No. 2 Chief Steve Chick told the Post that firefighters were able to contain the fire to an electrical room in the basement of the building.
The basement room was accessed by an exterior door on the southwest corner of the building between Bag & Baggage, a luxury travel store, and the former Macy’s store.
Firefighters used two of Consolidated Fire District No. 2’s ladder trucks and a drone from the Shawnee Fire Department equipped with thermal imaging to monitor the building’s roof as they contained the fire.
“Once the power was cut, CFD2 crews were able to fully extinguish the fire,” Chick said. “As part of this operation, we had to make access to several businesses in order to verify there wasn’t extension into those stores.”
Chick said a haze of smoke was found in some businesses, and firefighters used fans to clear the smoke from inside the impacted areas of the building.
“Crews did an excellent job of preserving a substantial amount of property in the strip mall by containing the fire to the area of origin until Evergy arrived to cut the power,” Chick told the Post.
As of Friday morning, 16 businesses in the shops and the former Macy’s building remained without power, according to city officials.
Bag and Baggage announced on Facebook that its Prairie Village shop would be closed Friday.
Chick told Prairie Village officials that a property manager is working to determine whether electrical repairs can be made quickly or if temporary truck-mounted generators will be needed to restore power to the businesses.
The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation.
No injuries were reported.