Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Roanoke firefighters help remove birds from the PetSmart store at Valley View Mall after a fire broke out Saturday afternoon. A PetSmart employee said she was told that the store will be closed for a week or two.

Erica Vermillion holds a puppy she rescued after a fire broke out Saturday at PetSmart near Valley View Mall in Roanoke. Vermillion helped move the puppy's crate away from the store entrance. She later filled out the adoption paperwork in the parking lot. She said that she and her fiance are going to name their new pet Sparky.

Kenda Knapp, a nurse with the Banfield veterinary hospital inside PetSmart, laughs as she is tickled by a guinea pig while she checks its breathing with a stethoscope after it was rescued from a fire inside the store. That store and adjacent Target were evacuated.

A fire in the Valley View PetSmart on Saturday afternoon caused two stores to be evacuated and altered shopping traffic as many scrambled to save the animals.

Roanoke Fire-EMS spokeswoman Tiffany Bradbury said the fire started inside PetSmart in the 4700 block of Valley View Boulevard Northwest a little after 1 p.m. The store's sprinkler system contained the fire, and crews arrived to heavy smoke coming from the building. Both PetSmart and neighboring Target were evacuated.

Bradbury said all of the animals are safe and there were no injuries to fire personnel, store employees or customers.

Portions of the parking lot were closed as firefighters continued to work to clear smoke from PetSmart and Target.

PetSmart employees said they had to act with haste and use teamwork to save animals owned by the store and customers' pets who were visiting the groomer.

"If we hadn't, plenty dogs and cats wouldn't have been all right," said Annie Prokop, a groomer at the store.

Prokop said protocol dictates that employees leave the animals, but she and her co-workers feared that the heavy, ceiling-high smoke would overtake them.

Kenda Knapp, a pet nurse at the Banfield veterinary hospital inside PetSmart, said the fire started in the back of the store, possibly in a break room, about 20 feet from where she and a veterinarian were about to perform a dental procedure. She said they had a dog and two cats, one of which was under anesthesia.

"My first thoughts were, 'We got to get the animals out.' My second thought was 'How are we going to get the PetSmart animals out?' " Knapp said.

Knapp estimated that about 80 animals were rescued quickly. Prokop said that groomers, cashiers and other employees were able to get the animals out in less than two minutes, at one point going back inside to rescue cats.

Erica Vermillion, 22, of Roanoke said that she and her fiance were at PetSmart to adopt a cat. Just outside the store in the pet adoption area, however, she ran across a puppy she'd seen online and "fell in love" when she picked him up.

"I walked inside to fill out the [adoption] application, and all of a sudden tons of people came running out yelling, 'Fire,' " Vermillion said. "But at the same time, tons of people were running back in saying, 'Get the animals, get the animals.' As many people running out were running back in to save the animals."

Knapp said she was told that the store will be closed for a week or two, but doesn't know an exact timetable. In the meantime, displaced animals will be at the Christiansburg PetSmart, she said.

PetSmart spokeswoman Jennifer Simmons said the store is working with fire authorities and police while a cause is determined. Bradbury said there are no damage estimates at this time.