A major printing plant in Nova Scotia was damaged in a fire yesterday afternoon.
Advocate Media, local newspaper LighthouseNow’s parent company, owns the printing plant and all of its publications are printed there.
Crystal Murray, president of Advocate Media’s operations, says an employee of the printing plant in Pictou saw smoke as they were driving home from church around noon and called 911.
At the same time, their alarm system was calling fire departments as well.
Several firefighter departments responded to the blaze and quick thinking employees briefly shut down the servers that host Advocate’s news websites to protect them.
Murray says it could have been a lot worse.
“The fire was contained in our shipping and inserting departments and were protected behind a firewall.”
But for a while it was looking a bit grim.
“We are pretty much back up and running at full capacity, which yesterday afternoon, we didn’t know was going to actually be a possibility for us,” says Murray.
Employees were allowed back in at around 4 p.m. and by that evening Nova Scotia Power turned their power back on.
Murray praised firefighters for their response as well as the crew that came in after to cleanup and inspect the printing press.
She says all of Advocate’s newspapers and magazines should be out on time.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Story by Brittany Wentzell
Twitter: @BrittWentzell
Email: wentzell.brittany@radioabl.ca
