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A chemical spill in a food-processing plant forced scores of people to evacuate an industrial area in Kelowna on Thursday.
The Kelowna Fire Department called in its Hazmat team to clean up the Leckie Court spill, believed to be five gallons of chlorine bleach that mixed with a cleaning solution containing citric acid. Employees at Sun Valley Processed Foods complained they felt burning in their throats from the vapour.
Three employees and a firefighter went to hospital for observation ìas a precautionary measure, said RCMP Sgt. Brad Swecera.
"There was a little burning sensation in the back of your throat when I was on scene. When I came back (later) it was less because they were venting. You could taste it in the air," he said.
The Hazmat team set up industrial fans to ventilate the food plant after the 33 employers got out. Worried that the fumes might affect other people downwind, Fire Chief Jeff Carlisle asked those working in neighbouring businesses to vacate the area as well.
About 70 people left the area. Police blocked off traffic along a one-block radius on Leckie Road, Dilworth Drive and Enterprise Way for about two hours.
A transit bus was called in to ferry affected employees to hospital, but no one boarded it. Paramedics treated people at the scene. No one appeared to be injured.  
The ventilation was to continue until after 5:30 p.m. Traffic resumed about 5 p.m.

Busy Springfield Road was closed Wednesday night after a five-vehicle crash sent live power lines dangling onto the route.
The crash between Dilworth Drive and Durnin Road happened just before 7 p.m. Police reported there were injuries, but would not say how many or how serious.
“The cause is also unknown and is currently being investigated,” said police in a statement.
At press deadline, Fortis BC was on scene to repair the line. Police expected the road closure to last until about midnight.

VANCOUVER (CP) — While Premier Christy Clark is cheering a tentative contract with British Columbia teachers, their union president says students will be worse off and that she only accepted the deal to avoid the threat of punitive legislation.
“We can’t underestimate the importance of resuming normal activity without disruption in schools next September,” Clark said Wednesday after a school year marred by a three-day walkout by teachers who refused to supervise some extracurricular activities or write some report cards.
Although B.C. Teachers Federation head Susan Lambert is recommending teachers vote to ratify the deal, she said the union representing 40,000 teachers was filing a court challenge Wednesday against the law passed in March that ended the job dispute and force both sides into mediation.
Lambert said the union, which has already spent $1 million on another legal battle against the government, wants a B.C. Supreme Court judge to suspend Bill 22 because it stripped them of their constitutional right to collective bargaining.
“We’ve had about 20 pieces of legislation aimed at public education over the course of the last decade,” she said. “Five of those have been found violating international labour organization agreements.”
The most recent battle in the decade-long conflict is over Bill 27 and Bill 28, which were introduced last year and ruled unconstitutional by B.C. Supreme Court Judge Susan Griffin in April 2011.
The new deal gives teachers improved benefits and seniority provisions but no wage increases in keeping with the government’s zero wage hike policy for public-sector unions.
“I think that the most significant thing we have to remember is that this agreement changes nothing in schools,” Lambert said.“ It doesn’t alleviate conditions that teachers have been struggling with over the last decade, it does not reduce class sizes in any way and it does not provide the supports that have been cut from public education over the last decade.”
Schools will face about a $100-million shortfall next year, she said, adding teachers could not bargain issues such as class size as part of the two-year agreement, which is retroactive to last year and will expire in June 2013, a month after the next election.
Education Minister George Abbott, who had maintained the government was prepared to legislate a teachers’ contract to prevent disruptions in the coming school year, said Wednesday that there wasn’t much optimism that mediation would work.
“This has come together, I think, to the surprise of many people,” said Abbott, who joined Clark in Kelowna. “This was not a babe that was easily born. This took a lot of work.”
In the middle of the dispute, teachers went to court to get a government-appointed mediator fired over his lack of experience, although that case is now moot.
Abbott said he was hopeful the mediated settlement was a sign that the decade-long dysfunctional relationship between the BCTF and the government was showing signs of repair.
Lambert later told reporters she is convinced that Clark, who was once the Liberal government’s education minister, has a “vendetta” against her union.

The tinkling music from ice cream trucks will be heard on West Kelowna streets, after all, this summer.

Council has reversed itself and voted to allow mobile vendors to play music while they cruise around town.
"I'm certainly pleased with this result," Coun. Bryden Winsby, who opposed the music ban in the first place, said Wednesday. "Council listened to all the outrage this generated and made the right decision"
Kathy Erickson of Scooters Ice Cream said she's pleased council has backed down from the ban in the face of considerable public opposition.
"I'm happy I can keep on selling ice cream and earning a living for my family," Erickson said. A music ban would have seriously dampened sales since people wouldn't know when the ice cream truck was coming along the street, she said.
Councillors looked at imposing the music ban during a meeting in mid-May when they considered the municipality's mobile vending policy.
As part of the policy, no form of music or voice-amplifying device was to have been allowed on a mobile vending unit.
Councillors who supported the ban said they'd heard from residents who didn't like the noise.
"We responded to public opinion on this," Mayor Doug Findlater said Wednesday. "We heard from the public loudly and clearly."
The revised policy will allow mobile vendors to play music while the vehicle is moving, but not when it's stopped. And they cannot park in one place for more than half an hour.

The B.C. Coroners Service has confirmed the identities of three peoeple who died in the crash of a small airplane near Peachland on Sunday.
The pilot of the Beaver plane that went down just off the Coquihalla Highway was Colin Moyes, aged 52, from West Vancouver.
His two passengers were a couple also from West Vancouver, Peter Brooke Lovelace Keate, 81, and Inez Helen Keate, 79.
The three were killed when the plane, owned by Moyes, crashed into a steep, wooded hillside just off Highway 97C near Brenda Mine
Road about 6:45 p.m.. It had taken off from Okanagan Lake only a few minutes earlier and was bound for the Pitt Meadows Airport where Moyes kept it.
The three were recovered from the wreckage by the Coroners Service specialized Identification and Disaster Response Unit. The identities of the three persons were confirmed by dental records.
The families of Moyes and of the Keates have been notified of their deaths.