City firefighters responded to the fire at around 11:30 a.m. on Thursday at CKF Inc. on Production Way, said City Fire Chief Rory Thompson. In total, eight engines, several other vehicles, and 52 firefighters were deployed to deal with the fire. The actual fire didn’t do too much damage to the building. “We were fortunate because the sprinkler system really held the fire in check for us,” said Thompson.
“There was a considerable amount of smoke,” he said of the fire near Fraser Highway. The fire was in the back of the large industrial building, and the complexity and size of the fire quickly led the City to go to three alarms. That brought in some Township crews to lend a hand.
However, the building was full of pallets of thousands of cardboard egg cartons. The fire had gotten into the cartons and the pallets. Between the fire and the water, the cartons were destroyed, and the pallets collapsed, leaving piles of debris five to six feet high.
Firefighters had to fight their way through the mess to lay hose lines and get at the last remnants of the fire. Two firefighters were hospitalized, with a City firefighter falling and injuring his shoulder, and a Township firefighter who hurt his knee.
Firefighters brought a lot of bottled water for crews and had to work in shifts, taking breaks to hydrate after fighting the fire on a day when temperatures hit the high 20s. “Pretty tired, that’s for sure,” Thompson said of how the crews felt after the fire was out.
Fire crews didn’t leave the scene until 4 a.m. on Friday. Investigators were looking through the scene Friday to try to determine the cause. City firefighters have had training with what are called “large box” fires, and they recently did a command and control training exercise in concert with the Langley Township firefighters. Township and City firefighters frequently work together on larger fires or cover for one another when crews are very busy.
A flash fire broke out at the West Oregon Wood Products mill in Columbia City on Saturday night, May 23, but there was no serious structural damage recorded, according to the chief of Columbia River Fire & Rescue. The fire was “largely controlled” by workers at the mill and the fire sprinklers, according to the CRF&R release, and they worked in concert with firefighters to put out smoldering wood and dust over the course of about two hours.
A press release provided to the Spotlight on Tuesday, May 26, by Jay Tappan states the fire was reported at 10:05 p.m. Fire crews from CRF&R and the Scappoose Fire District responded with six fire engines, along with other support vehicles, and 23 personnel. No injuries were reported. Tappan told the Spotlight there appears to be no structural damage from the fire, although a full cost estimate was not available. The flash fire was caused by hot metal fragments that ignited the wood dust, an investigation determined. The mill returned to operations Sunday.
A fire in a tank of detergent was doused Sunday by the sprinkler system at a Redding manufacturing plant, a Redding Fire Department official said. Shortly after 5 p.m. a fire alarm went off at Seco Manufacturing on Oasis Road, Battalion Chief Steve Reilly said.
The fire alarm was activated by a fire in a tank of detergent used in a process to anodize aluminum that is used to make surveying equipment, he said.
A fire sprinkler turned on above the tank, keeping the fire from spreading, he said. Shortly after the fire broke out, firefighters with Redding’s Engine Co. No. 6, which is across the street from the plant, heard the fire alarm and saw a light smoke coming from the rear of the business, Reilly said.
The firefighters got access to the rear of the building and were able to put it out by about 5:30 p.m., Reilly said. The business was closed for the Memorial Day weekend. The fire was confined to the tank, he said. He said the fire was caused by a malfunction in how the tank operates.
As reported by CNN … a transformer failure at the Indian Point nuclear power plant caused an explosion and fire at the facility Saturday evening, sending billows of black smoke into the air near Buchanan, New York.
The fire broke out on the non-nuclear side of the plant, about 200 yards away from the reactor building, according to Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi.
“The fire is out and the plant is safe and stable,” Nappi said. Federal officials said one reactor unit automatically shut down. No one was injured in the blaze.
A sprinkler system doused the fire with the help of personnel on the scene, Nappi said. There was “no threat to public safety at any time,” the facility said in a tweet. “All Indian Point emergency systems worked as designed.”
Multiple emergency services agencies responded to the explosion at the plant, located approximately 50 miles north of Manhattan, including the Westchester County and New York State Police.
“We saw just a huge black ball of smoke right across the river,” witness Gustavus Gricius told CNN. “We could smell the oily, electric burn smell.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo was at the plant and received a briefing on the accident. He called the incident “relatively minor” but added, “these situations we take very seriously. This is a nuclear-powered plant; it’s nothing to be trifled with.”
The blast sent the facility into an emergency response situation classified as an “unusual event,” according to Nappi.
The event was declared at 5:50 p.m. and the fire was out by 6:15 p.m. Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the agency had three inspectors respond.
“They’re cooling down the reactor and we’ll have to investigate the cause of the fire,” he said.
The facility houses two nuclear reactor units and produces approximately 25% of the electricity for New York City and Westchester County, according to its website.
Stryker Corp. had to be evacuated Wednesday evening after a fire broke out in one of the building’s machine shops. At 6:32 p.m. Wednesday, the Portage Fire Department responded to reports of a fire alarm activation in Stryker Medical, located at 3800 E Center Avenue in Portage, according to Portage Battalion Chief Rick Nason.
Within 64 seconds, the first fire crew arrived on scene and witnessed the company’s employees evacuating the building, though “reported nothing showing on the building’s exterior,” Nason said.
Inside, investigators discovered smoke billowing in one of the building’s machine rooms, located on the west side of the structure. “We responded non-emergency to the alarm and upgraded the call,” Nason said, adding three engines responded to the scene after firefighters discovered the smoke, as well as water spread by the company’s sprinkler system.
“It was a big enough fire to set off the system, but it was contained,” Nason said, adding the sprinkler system extinguished the blaze. “There’s some plastic that’s burned up, next to a machine,” Nason added of the damages sustained during the fire.
Firefighters worked for more than an hour clearing water and smoke from the building. No one was injured during the incident. The cause is under investigation.
Reporting on lives and property saved by fire sprinklers
