At around 1:53 p.m. Saturday, when the Fire Department received the call, Food Lion customers and employees began to evacuate the store. The manager of the grocery store on Western Boulevard found a freon gas leak in the compressor room and called the Raleigh Fire Department right away.

“The store manager was back-checking [the compressor room] when he smelled the leak and called for an evacuation,” James Poole, division chief of the Fire Department, said.

No one was injured, but Fire Department trucks, EMS and police cars arrived on the scene, with police cars blocking off all the entrances of the Food Lion shopping center.

Poole said the Fire Department knew what to expect and calling numerous responders to the scene was not an overreaction because it was necessary.

“You have to send all of this,” he said of the number of response units.

According to Poole, the leak was not intentional, but was just a malfunction.

“We have a few [leaks like this], but with as many grocery stores as we have, it doesn’t happen often,” he said.

Poole said overexposure to the gas, which is used as a refrigerant, can cause dizziness, headaches and nervous system depression, and large concentrations of it can even prove to be fatal.

“It does have some smell to it, but it’s not like propane or anything,” Poole said.

According to Poole, the leak “just leaked out and corrected itself,” and the Fire Department ventilated the area.

The store opened again a few hours later.