Smoke From Cabinet Forces Evacuation

A smoking cabinet outside a building owned by Amgen Inc. forced the evacuation of employees and tenants Tuesday as hazardous-materials crews worked to get at the source of the emission.

An Amgen employee working at the building in Newbury Park noticed the smoking cabinet on the back of a truck about 11 a.m. and contacted the company’s emergency response team.

Company officials, in turn, called sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and hazardous-materials workers to the building at the northwest corner of Rancho Conejo Boulevard and Teller Road.

Nine Amgen employees and 12 youngsters at the Evangelical Free Church of the Conejo Valley, which shares the building, were evacuated for more than three hours.

After opening the cabinet, crews discovered that the source of the emission was one of three “ventilation monitoring devices,” small cardboard tubes that release a measured amount of smoke when crushed.

The devices are used to test the effectiveness of laboratory ventilation systems.

“Whoever cleaned [the cabinet] out didn’t detect the three tubes that were stuck behind the drawer,” said David Kaye, spokesman for the biotechnology giant.

Kaye said one of the tubes was evidently crushed when the cabinet was loaded onto a truck.

The cabinet was being moved with other furniture to an office at Amgen’s complex across the street.

No neighboring businesses were affected and no injuries were reported.