A fire at the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Pacific Press January 27 was quickly extinguished and did not cause significant damage to the plant, reports Robert Kyte, president of the Pacific Press Publishing Association.

A newly reinstalled device, used for reducing the emission of pollutants from one of the presses, caught fire Sunday evening, causing flames to shoot up through the building’s chimney stack.

“The fire department was immediately called to extinguish the fire, which was done late Sunday night,” says Kyte. “There were no injuries to anyone and damage was contained in the catalytic converter [the emission control device]. The Web press and building were not damaged.” The cause of the fire is not known.

The Web press was down on Monday, January 28, for a pressroom cleanup of water and to ensure that all systems were ready to reactivate the press. The Web press started up again the next morning and is currently functioning at full capacity. The catalytic converter has been deemed inoperable and a new one has been ordered to replace it at a cost of approximately $200,000.

“The work of Pacific Press in serving our customers has not been affected by this interruption,” says Kyte. “We are grateful to God that this situation was not worse and that no one was injured.”