An overheated cord on a barroom cooler is to blame for a small fire at The Blue Grotto on Monday morning, a fire investigator said Monday.

A room full of smoke greeted cleaning staff at the Victoria Street bar and a phone call was made to 911. Fire and Rescue battalion chief Rob Chalmers said a team was dispatched at about 8:22 a.m.

Chalmers said smoke from an electrical fire has a distinct smell. That’s not what the smoke in the Grotto smelled like, which led crews to believe the building was on fire.

“There was stuff smoldering,” he said.

The blaze was quickly extinguished and a fire investigator summoned. Insp. Dan Funk said the blaze burned at an electrical outlet behind the bar.

There was a lamp, a sign and a cooler in the area. Funk tested them all to determine what could have ignited the fire. The culprit turned out to be the cooler’s power cord, he said.

Chalmers said no one had been in the Grotto since noon on Sunday. This makes it’s difficult to determine exactly when the fire started.