Office Building, Other Business

Boston, MA – Sprinkler system activates in spontaneous combustion fire at downtown office building

Firefighters believe a spontaneous combustion caused a small fire at a downtown Boston office building Thursday night, the fire department said. The fire started in a work room on the first floor of 50 Milk St. at about 8:55 p.m., said Steve MacDonald, a Boston fire spokesman.

“It generated a lot of smoke,” he said, but the building was otherwise not damaged, and the Friday workday should not be affected. The department believes some rags in the work room had spontaneously combusted. MacDonald said the rags had some solvents on them and were in a room that was poorly ventilated.

The room did have a sprinkler system, however, which activated when the fire began, MacDonald said.  Fire companies left the scene by about 10:15 p.m. There were very few people in the building at the time of the fire, MacDonald said.

Apartment Building, Residential

Houston, TX – Single sprinkler contains early morning apartment fire; No injuries reported

Fire marshals are crediting a sprinkler system with limiting damage during an early-morning fire at a northwest Harris County apartment complex. A blaze broke out at about 5:30 a.m. Thursday on the third floor of an apartment in the 15000 block of Tuckerton.

The fire triggered a single sprinkler system on the balcony. It contained the flames until firefighters arrived at the scene. There were no reports of injuries, officials said.

“The fire sprinkler did exactly what it was designed to do. Lives and property were saved because one sprinkler head activated and minimized the fire damage,” said Harris County Fire Marshal Mike Montgomery. The cause of the fire was later identified as “discarded smoking materials,” officials said.

Food Processing, Manufacturing

Unalaska, AK – Sprinkler system puts out fire caused by explosion at seafood processing plant

A Dutch Harbor seafood processing plant was severely damaged by an explosion Monday evening a public safety official said was likely caused by the ignition of fine fish-meal dust, though the incident remained under investigation Wednesday.

Mike Holman, director of Unalaska’s Department of Public Safety, said the blast — first reported by public radio station KUCB — occurred inside the Westward Seafoods plant on Captains Bay Road at about 6:45 p.m. Monday. Thirteen members of the department responded.

There were employees inside the building at the time of the explosion, but no injuries were reported. Westward Seafoods President Mark Johanson confirmed employees were in the facility, which he described as mostly “one large open space,” but were thankfully uninjured.

The blast likely occurred when an undetermined ignition source detonated dust from the production of fish meal, often used as feed for other fish, Holman said.

Johanson said the exact cause of the blast was still undetermined, though fish-meal dust was among the possible culprits. He declined to mention other possible causes.

“I don’t want to speculate at this point,” Johanson said. “We’ll do our investigation and obviously we’ll learn from it.”

Johanson said the fish-meal plant was closed for the time being, due to the extent of the damage.

“There’s quite a bit of damage inside the building — some of the pipes erupted, and one of the doors was blown off its hinges into a container,” Holman said.

Holman said no foul play is currently suspected in the blast, which is also being investigated by the state fire marshal. The plant’s sprinkler system extinguished the resulting fire before crews arrived but contributed to damage estimates well beyond the $100,000 first reported after the fire.

“It sounds like the sprinklers, when they went off, they dumped a lot of water on all the electrical equipment,” Holman said.

Johanson said one pollock season was wrapping up and the fish-meal plant isn’t needed in any current fishery openings. The company was optimistic the plant will be fully operational in time for another pollock season in January, he said.

Holman said he has seen two fish-meal dust explosions at Dutch Harbor plants during his 21 years with the department, but those blasts hadn’t been as costly as the one Monday.

“I don’t think it has caused as much damage as this one,” Holman said. “This was a little bit bigger.”

Hotel / Motel, Hotel / Restaurant

Las Vegas, NV – Sprinkler system halts hotel fire started by careless smoking

Careless smoking is suspected after a fire this morning at a Fremont Street hotel forced the evacuation of three floors.

Firefighters responded just before 12:50 a.m. at the Golden Nugget Hotel, 129 Fremont St., according to a Las Vegas Fire & Rescue news release. The fire was reported on the ninth floor of the Carson Tower. The building has 18 floors. Guests on the eighth, ninth, and 10th floors were evacuated.

When firefighters arrived on the ninth floor, they found moderate smoke in the hallway. When they entered the room, they found the fire had already been brought under control because of an automatic fire sprinkler in the room. No one was in the room when firefighters arrived.

Firefighters found a small portion of a mattress was smoldering. There was also damage to the head board on the bed, and the rest of the hotel room had minor smoke damage. Damage was estimated at $10,000.

Investigators said they believe the fire is smoking related. The guest was in bed sleeping when the fire sprinkler activated allowing her to leave without injury.

The hotel returned to normal services within 90 minutes.

Primary / Secondary School, School / University

Westerly, RI – Closet fire at high school extinguished with help from sprinkler system

A small fire that started in the closet of a technology room at Westerly High School Tuesday was caused by an electrical malfunction in a piece of audio-visual equipment being stored in the closet.

Westerly Fire Chief John Mackay said Wednesday that there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the fire, adding that the school’s sprinkler system worked effectively and aided firefighters in quickly containing and extinguishing the small closet fire. The fire never spread outside the closet, officials said, and no injuries were reported.

Westerly firefighters and police were dispatched to the high school just after 3:15 p.m. Tuesday with reports of a box alarm sounding. They arrived to find black smoke coming from a closet in the tech room closest to the gymnasium foyer. Mackay said the sprinkler system had already doused most of the flames by the time firefighters arrived.

Classes were back in session on Wednesday.

Hotel / Motel, Hotel / Restaurant

Wichita, KS – Cooking fire at high-rise hotel extinguished by sprinkler system

The Wichita Fire Department was busy early Tuesday evening. Fire crews were called out to a high-rise building fire at the Value Place Hotel in the 3400 hundred block of N. Great Plains, near K-96 and Oliver around 6:45 p.m.

Apartment Building, Residential, Residential High Rise

Victoria, BC, Canada – Stove fan fire in high-rise apartment building doused by sprinkler system

A small fire in an apartment building on Fisgard Street will likely have residents of least a few units looking for somewhere to stay tonight. Crews were called to the 12-story Hudson Mews building at 780 Fisgard just before 8 p.m.

People living in the 120-unit building were forced out as firefighters arrived and searched for the cause. It turned out to be a fire in a stove fan on the fifth floor of the building.

“When crews arrived on scene, they found that a suite on the fifth floor had had sprinkler activation,” said Victoria Fire Department Acting Battalion Chief Mark Robertson.

“it was caused by a small fire in a hood vent.” The fire doesn’t appear to have caused much damage but it set off sprinklers.

“The fire has been extinguished but there was quite a bit of water damage to the suites below,” said Robertson.  City of Victoria Emergemcy Social Service attended to take care of any residents that were unable to return to their suites.

The building’s management team assisted with contacting their repair contractors and organizing their residents.  Those who could return home were allowed back in about 45 minutes later.

The building opened in May 2014.

Other - Manufacturing, Paper Mill / Saw Mill

Queensbury, NY – Fire at wood shaving plant contained with help from sprinkler system

A wood-shavings plant caught fire Tuesday morning, two months after federal workplace safety officials cited the company for failing to correct “potential fire and explosion hazards.”

Fire crews from four towns responded to reports of a structure fire about 7:15 a.m. at RWS Manufacturing, 22 Ferguson Lane. The blaze extended from an outside conveyor that moved wood shavings to an inside storage facility, Kingsbury Fire Chief Butch Chase said. “Something may have malfunctioned,” he said.

Investigators do not consider the fire suspicious and no one was injured, Chase said. The fire was extinguished by 8 a.m.  “It’s the nature of their business,” Chase said.

RWS — which makes animal bedding from wood shavings for Quebec-based Royal Wood Shavings — said in July it would shut down if it is not successful in appealing $197,820 in fines from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA claims the plant is exposing its employees to “potential fire and explosion hazards.”

The equipment cited by OSHA was not involved in the blaze, Chase said. A county fire inspection of the plant last month did not identify any problems, he said.

“They are on good order with us,” Chase said. He said he has toured the facility in the past and responded to three other fires on the property in the past six years.

The wood shavings produced there smoke and smolder a lot, Chase said, “but seldom burst into flames.” The building itself was aflame Tuesday, he said.

RWS was operating when the fire started. Staff had safely evacuated the building and started to suppress the fire with hose lines when firefighters arrived, Chase said. The buildings’ sprinkler system stayed on as the fire crews extinguished the blaze.

“They have an extensive clean-up,” Chase said. RWS will undergo a town code inspection and fire chief walkthrough before opening again, he said.

In July, OSHA cited RWS for half a dozen violations totaling about $50,000 and levied an additional $147,000 in penalties after the company failed to fix previously identified violations.

The Queensbury plant, which operates in the Warren-Washington County Industrial Park, was cited for 28 violations in 2013 and fined more than $233,000 for workplace safety violations related to fire, fall and explosion risk. Two of those violations were deemed as “willful,” meaning the company ignored federal safety rules.

“RWS Manufacturing has disregarded its employees’ safety in failing to correct an obvious fire and explosion hazard and in allowing the existence of new and recurring hazards,” said Robert Garvey, OSHA’s area director in Albany in a July press release. “Especially disturbing is the fact that, since OSHA’s last inspection, a significant fire occurred in the plant’s production area in December 2015.”

 

Apartment Building, Residential

Seattle, WA – No injuries after apartment complex fire is extinguished by sprinkler system

Residents at a Seattle apartment complex said they started knocking on each other’s doors as soon as the fire alarms went off. Tenants evacuated early Tuesday morning as flames burned through portions of the second and third floors of the Union View Apartment complex, Seattle Fire said. The building’s sprinkler system extinguished the fire.

The complex is located in the 1600 block of Dexter Avenue North. A unit’s patio was charred in the flames. No injuries were reported,

Close to 60 Seattle firefighters responded.  Authorities haven’t determined the fire’s cause, as of Tuesday morning. Fire officials are investigating.

Retail, Shopping Mall

Missoula, MT – Sprinkler system activates to help prevent dumpster fire from spreading into shopping mall

Witnesses say thick smoke was billowing into the Southgate Mall late Friday evening as emergency crews responded to a fire outside the shopping center. 

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