Employees Evacuated Amid O.C. Register Fire
Employees at the Orange County Register evacuated the newspaper’s headquarters on North Grand Avenue in Santa Ana on Tuesday after reports of heavy smoke from a smoldering fire 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 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 closed during the investigation, Talmage said. Some portions of today’s edition of the newspaper were printed at The Times Orange County’s plant in Costa Mesa.
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