Union Township Police closed a section of Morris Avenue after a fire broke out underground on Tuesday night.
Officials said around 10:30 p.m., the Union Fire Department was dispatched to the corner of Morris and Stuyvesant avenues for smoke and fire coming from underground.
Union Township officials said as firefighters, they found two separate, underground electric vaults with smoke and fire coming out of them.
PSEG was requested for an immediate response, and the buildings were checked and evacuated.
Morris Avenue east and westbound was closed, and Stuyvesant Avenue was closed north and south.
Officials said the fires went out within a half-hour, but smoke and high levels of Carbon Monoxide have traveled with the basements of multiple stores in Union Center.
The fire department began to ventilate those stores and remained to monitor with meters until levels of carbon monoxide reached zero.
The entire incident took about 2 hours from the start, officials said.