Article content

A small explosion and fire forced a brief evacuation of the Tweed Inc. medicinal marijuana production plant in Smiths Falls Monday morning.

The fire occurred just before 9:30 a.m. while construction crews were using an acetylene torch in an unoccupied portion of the company’s sprawling campus, said Bruce Linton, founder and CEO of Canopy Growth, Tweed’s parent company.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Fire forces evacuation of Tweed marijuana facility in Smiths Falls Back to video

The area, once used as the visitor centre when the plant was operated by Hershey’s Chocolate, was being renovated for expansion by Tweed’s operations, Linton said.

“It appears that somehow they damaged the tanks and that caused a small fire,” Linton said. “There was no damage to the building, but it did cause a little bit of excitement.”

There were no injuries.

It took just over five minutes to bring the fire under control, said Smiths Falls Fire Chief Normand Beauchamp. The complex was evacuated for about 30 minutes, but there was no significant damage or interruption of production, he said.

The Smiths Falls plant is one of four production facilities Canopy operates, and occupies about 180,000 square feet of the complex at 1 Hershey Dr.