If there's smoke coming out of the gear up to where the pax can see it, you ain't going to be able to stop them from evacuating anyway.
I remember when Valujet blew an engine on takeoff and had a fire come into the aft fuselage on a DC-9 in KATL. They aborted and evacuated. They found all the overwing exit doors about a hundred yards behind the aircraft - pax just opened them up on their own....