STANTON (AP) - A fire in a building near the Leland Olds electric power plant in west central North Dakota was brought under control after about three hours, the Mercer County sheriff said. No injuries were reported but the blaze forced the evacuation of about a dozen people living nearby.

Mercer County Sheriff Dean Danziesen said the fire was reported about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. The cause was not known.

Basin Electric Power Cooperative spokesman Floyd Robb said the power plant itself, just southeast of Stanton, was not affected by the blaze. It is presently out of service for maintenance work.

Robb said the fire began in a temporary building, fashioned out of shipping containers, that was being used to make fiberglass liners for a new concrete exhaust chimney at the plant. Two fiberglass flues are to be fitted inside the chimney, Basin spokesman Daryl Hill said.

The fire was fed by fiberglass and resins used to make the material. Robb said the building was about a quarter-mile from the power plant. A stretch of State Highway 200 near the plant was closed for a short time.

The fiberglass manufacturing is part of a $410 million pollution control project, Hill said. It began in the spring of 2007 and is expected to be finished in 2010.

Robb said he was unsure whether the fire would set back the project's completion schedule.

Richard Sorenson, the Mercer County emergency manager, said an area downwind of the fire was evacuated as a precaution because of chemicals at the fire site. He estimated a dozen people were asked to leave.

Danziesen said the people who were evacuated were told just after midnight that they could return to their homes.