Flammable Liquid Spill Causes Brief Evacuation

A storage-room spill of a quart of flammable acetone caused an hour-long evacuation of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator building yesterday morning. Officials said no one was injured in the incident, which occurred on the fourth floor of the Oxford St. research laboratory.

After about 15 employees left the building, Cambridge firemen turned off power to avoid igniting the liquid, and cleaned up the acetone in 10 minutes. "Everything was quickly under control," Gari Gatwood, a Harvard safety engineer at the scene, said later.