Hundreds were evacuated from a commercial high rise in downtown Boston after a vending machine caught fire Friday afternoon, officials said.
The fire on the 13th floor of 60 State St. was quickly contained and caused no damage to the building, a police officer at the scene said.
Fire officials believe that an electrical issue caused the machine to spark, Boston Fire Department spokesman Brian Alkins said.
Firefighters arrived on State Street at 2 p.m. and began evacuating workers from some, but not all, of the floors in the building.
When firefighters got to the 13th floor, they were able to unplug the vending machine and then “they opened the machine up and it was smoldering, so they put some water on it,” Alkins said.
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Once the fire was extinguished, firefighters used a fan system to vent the smoke out of the building, Alkins said.
Hayley King, 30, works two floors above where the fire was. She and her co-workers were evacuated at 2:13 p.m. down the stairs.
“We could smell smoke in the stairway,” she said.
Shortly before 2:30 p.m., people were allowed back into the building after firefighters had cleared the smoke, Boston Fire Chief Joseph Casper said.
Maddie Kilgannon can be reached at maddie.kilgannon@globe.com.