LEWISTON, Idaho (From news reports) -- No one was injured after a chemical leak forced evacuations at a paper manufacturing complex in Idaho.

An alarm prompted about 400 employees and contractors to evacuate from Clearwater Paper in Lewiston Wednesday morning, but operations returned to normal later that day.

An undetermined volume of chemicals leaked for about a half-hour inside the 180,000-square-foot (16,700-square-meter) building, company spokesman Matt Van Vleet said. Machinery inside the building was idle at the time due to annual maintenance. The chemicals involved were two antibacterial agents, sodium hypochlorite and a proprietary solution of ammonia, used to keep the manufacturing equipment clean.

"We were doing maintenance on the digital control system and other parts of the equipment that house and transport the two chemicals," Van Vleet said. "A valve opened and we mixed the two together, too much and in the wrong process. That's what we believed happened."

****

Jim Thompson is back again...with a new book on a taboo subject: the personalities in the pulp & paper industry. Jim has written in the past on many subjects based on his four plus decades in the worldwide pulp and paper industry. This new book is packed full of information valuable to the senior member of the industry as well as the recent entrant. A must for every pulp and paper library.