Alarm in the early afternoon today at the Coop in via Valentini. Around 2pm some customers noticed smoke outside the supermarket coming from a grate on the side of Via Ferrucci. The store managers were immediately notified who called for help and evacuated the supermarket. The customers were taken out for the necessary investigations, carried out by the Prato firefighters. Unicoop Firenze informs that there was a fault in the refrigeration system of the fresh and frozen department: the breakage of a pipe would have caused the release of gas, carbon dioxide, and out of caution an evacuation was carried out. A police patrol also arrived at the scene.
The store was closed pending restoration work and checks on the integrity of the cold chain and the perishability of the goods. The repair took place in the late afternoon and it was reopened to the public at 7pm. A thousand meters of sales area, the Coop in Via Valentini was inaugurated in November 2016. The breakdown at the Prato supermarket is coupled with the start of a fire this morning at the Esselunga shopping center in Sesto Fiorentino. Also in this case the customers were evacuated. Fortunately, there were no injuries in either of the two incidents.
