Manufacturing, Manufacturing Plant Ashwaubenon, WI – Early morning fire at fiberglass manufacturer limited by sprinkler system April 27, 2016 viking210 No one was inside an Ashwaubenon fiberglass maker when fire broke out early Tuesday morning, according to Ashwaubenon Public Safety. Firefighters say it appears a some machinery–possibly an air compressor–caught fire in the back of the building, located in the 2900 hundred block of Holmgren Way. A sprinkler system alerted crews to the fire and prevented the blaze from spreading to the fiberglass material inside the warehouse. “Actually the contents inside, we had no extension inside to the contents,” said Chief Eric Dunning, Ashwaubenon Public Safety. “If that would’ve caught, we’d still be fighting it right now. The fire stayed with the machinery itself, but with the contents inside there, this could’ve been far worse.” The building did sustain smoke damage. Crews were entering the business to investigate what caused the equipment to spark a fire. “Right now, I’m not sure what the estimate cost of the machinery is,” Chief Dunning said. “And then obviously with the heavy smoke, and there’s quite a few of what appears to be fiberglass halls in there, if there were smoke damage to the halls that were inside the facility.” The chief stressed the importance of having a sprinkler system. “We’ll take that in the luck category. We’ll take that as a win for us,” Chief Dunning said. “What also helped is we had an active sprinkler system, so the sprinkler system kept things to a minimum, where if the building wasn’t sprinklered it would’ve for sure spread into other contents and we wouldn’t have been alerted until it was coming through the building.” Holmgren Way and Ramada Way were closed for a brief time near the scene of a fire. The roads reopened after 5 a.m.
