13/September/2013 – Structure Fire – “B” Shift

Incident # 13-05004 – An early morning fire in an industrial building at 304 Thunderbolt Drive, quickly went to three alarms Friday morning 13-September. The 57,600 square foot manufacturing facility was most recently used by a company to produce wood pellets as fuel for European Power Plants. The company closed over a year ago, but the building remained filled to capacity with saw dust and wood chips. The byproducts were compressed into the large wooden pellets, before being shipped overseas. The Fire Marshal’s Office had voiced concerns about the tremendous fire load in the building and pre-incident planning called for two alarms on the structure in the initial dispatch. At 05:54, 9-1-1 was notified by a security guard of a fire in the building. According to the Security Officer, workers cleaning the building had been using a torch which ignited a piece of equipment the night before, but they extinguished the fire. He reported to Deputies that he saw the fire smoldering at 23:30 and again extinguished the fire, but later found it smoldering around 04:00. He used a water hose a second time to extinguish the fire. Fire-Rescue was not notified of any of the incidents. At approximately 05:45 the fire had involved a conveyer system with flames reaching the 20 foot ceiling. The power had been disconnected to the structure, but fortunately the sprinkler system was still working. A single sprinkler head was activated and contained the fire to the piece of equipment.

 Firefighters arrived within three minutes to find smoke coming from the building.  Crews set up in the loading dock area, while incoming apparatus was directed to lay LDH from a hydrant approximately 1600 feet away. Engine 19 and Ladder 19 made the 1600 foot lay. Due to the possible dangers with the products in the building a third alarm was requested shortly after arrival. Engine 26 was at the hydrant in front of Rockford Manufacturing pumping to Engine 19 in front of the plant. Engine 19 supplied the sprinkler system and relayed through LDH to Engine 1 at the loading dock. Ladder 19 set up behind Engine 1. Due to the distance inside the building, a 200’ three inch line was run inside the building, then gated off with a wye. Two 200’ 1-3/4 lines were connected to the wye. Firefighters worked their way through the smoke filled building, but found that most of the wood chips and saw dust had been removed from the building. The fire in the equipment was extinguished. Crews continued to check the interior and roof of the building as smoke was still visible. Fire was found in the ceiling above the equipment, but interior crews were able to extinguish that as well. Three PPV fans were set up at the loading dock to ventilate the building which took some time due the size of the structure. The conveyor equipment was heavily damaged by the fire, but the building suffered relatively minor damage.