Fire Forces Evacuation of Newspaper Employees
Employees of the Orange County Register evacuated the newspaper’s headquarters on North Grand Avenue on Tuesday after reports of heavy smoke in the pressroom, authorities said.
About 50 firefighters responded to the call just after 2 p.m. One firefighter suffered minor injuries to his knee while fighting the smoky blaze.
Santa Ana fire spokesman Jeff Talmage said workers were doing maintenance work on the presses when they noticed smoke coming from a dust collector.
“The next thing they knew, they had fire in one of the dust collectors,” Talmage said. “There wasn’t a lot of fire, just smoke.”
Fire crews doused smoldering rolls of newsprint, and the initial blaze was contained within 45 minutes. The cause of the fire was still under investigation late Tuesday.
The Register’s printing presses were shut down during the investigation, Talmage said. Some sections of today’s edition of the newspaper were printed at The Times Orange County’s plant in Costa Mesa.
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