PORT ALBERNI, British Columbia (From the Alberni Valley Times) -- Local fire departments were at the Alberni Valley's largest mill on Monday after sparks emerged from a particularly hot machine on the Catalyst Paper property.

Alarms were raised when a paper jam occurred in Catalyst's sweat dryer, a section of the mill where equipment regularly operates at 150 Celsius (over 300 degrees Fahrenheit) in order to reduce the moisture level of the paper to seven per cent.

The temperature rose when a tail jammed in the section where a paper roll is threaded into the machine, creating a friction that spread sparks to other areas, said Harold Norlund, general manager of Catalyst's Port Alberni division.

"The tail appeared to have jammed and built up behind this small threading doctor, and what you get is a friction fire. It throws smoke and sparks," he said.

"It doesn't take much friction on a paper to cause a friction fire. Paper, by itself, will ignite at 450 degrees fahrenheit."

The Port Alberni Fire Department was alerted at 10:20 a.m. And were joined at the Catalyst mill by volunteer fire departments from Sproat Lake and Beaver Creek through an automatic mutual aid agreement tied to fires in the community's sawmills and paper mill.

A total of 22 firefighters were at the scene, including three from Sproat Lake and five from Beaver Creek.

The facility's sprinklers put out the majority of the fire, but crews remained at the scene for hours to attend to the spread of the blaze. The fire was completely out by 1:44 p.m. "The fire itself was extinguished quickly, but there was a number of smoulders throughout that space, up in the mezzanines and down the basement as well," said Port Alberni fire chief Tim Pley.

"Those paper fires, they flash up quickly with lots of flames."

Fans normally circulate air around the sweat dryer to cool the room, but this system created hazards after the paper ignited, causing burning projectiles to blow around until the fans were shut off.

"Picture this paper flying everywhere on fire and, in the movement of the air, smoldering pieces of paper land on all kinds of surfaces all over that facility," Pley said.

While wearing breathing apparatuses firefighters searched the smoke-filled room for glowing embers after the circulation system was turned off, added the fire chief.

This is not the first time this year the Valley's departments have been called to mill fires; on March 3 a blaze in Western Forest Product's Alberni Pacific Division sawmill occupied the fire departments for several hours, and other equipment malfunctions caused fires in the Catalyst facility in April and January.

Norlund said the feeding mechanism will be changed in the future to make the machine safer, which Norlund expected would be running again by late Monday afternoon.

"We're going to take that threading tail out of there," Norlund said. "We believe it's running too close to the dryer can and the tail can jam there a bit too easily."