The Howard Township Fire say the fire started in a cardboard bin around 12 a.m.
Another employee heard about the fire and called 9-1-1.
When crews arrived on scene, flames and heavy smoke were visible.
Officials from Waste Management were on scene to help limit the damage. At the time of the fire, there were six bulk haulers in line to haul out debris to the mainland and another eight route trucks in line to bring trash to the transfer station. The fire caused only a three-hour delay in the process. Marston said this fire is a good reminder to residents on why it is important to separate household chemicals from your regular trash.
Bruehl said though the exact cause of the blaze hasn’t been determined, it’s likely that the fire was caused by a chemical reaction or some sort of discarded material that shouldn’t have been thrown in a dumpster to begin with.
“Most likely, it was discarded either when they loaded it or unloaded it, [it could be] friction or a chemical reaction, some kind of chemicals in it. I mean, it’s trash, so it’s kind of hard to pinpoint it. We looked at all of the different items in the trash, but we couldn’t find any particular items. It could have been anything from a cigarette discarded to a chemical reaction from something.”
Minimal damage was caused by the fire, according to Bruehl, and no equipment was harmed, but Bruehl did have some tips for the community about what should and shouldn’t be thrown into a trash receptacle. Advice he hopes can help prevent fires like these from happening in the future.
“— Be careful what you throw away, no chemicals — are supposed to be put in the trash dumpsters,” he said. “—It can cause chemical reactions. Paint thinner, oil, bleach even. — A lot of people don’t know it, but [a] bleach and motor oil combination can, it takes an hour or two, it gets hotter and hotter and then bursts into flames if they get mixed together. — An empty bleach bottle still has some residue in it and the right combinations, temperature and the wind — can set off a chemical reaction.”
Royal Oak firefighters were called to the recycling facility about 12:50 p.m.
Other than possible smoke inhalation there were no reported injuries.
The fire reportedly broke out on a conveyor machine at the recycling plant.
Though smoke spread and a sprinkler system about the machine was activated, Cummins said it was a relatively small fire.
“We’ve had similar fires at the building in the past,” he said.
Less than a year ago, about 20 people at Royal Oak Recycling were evacuated and the plant closed for the day after a machine caught fire in November 2016. No one was injured.
Crews responded to the fire at the facility shortly before 5 a.m. Thursday, forcing employees and haulers off site, and the postponement of the start of a free, three-day appliance disposal program, which will begin Friday.
No injuries were reported and the blaze was put out by early afternoon, a county official said.
Thursday afternoon there was no dollar value estimate of the damage. But it was limited to some offices and the tipping floor where garbage is deposited after haulers make their pick-ups from customers throughout the county, Moraine Fire Chief David Cooper said.
“It’s a big building. There’s not much to burn other than the trash that’s in there,” he said.
Cooper said a definite cause had not been determined. However, it’s not uncommon for trash fires to flare up after haulers empty loads that can contain smoldering material, he said.
“And basically what happens is a fire starts down deep inside of it and it kind of snakes through,” Cooper added. “So you have to just dig it out and keep applying water.”
Moraine fire personnel were on the scene for more than seven hours, aided by crews from Dayton, Kettering and the Miami Valley Fire District, Cooper said.
The transfer station was not staffed overnight, he said, allowing the fire to get “a pretty good head start” before crews arrived. Yet he noted the “sprinkler system actually held it in check” for “quite some time until we got there.”
Crews used back hoes to separate the trash while using some 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames, Cooper said.
“You almost have to move every bit of trash that’s on that floor,” he said. “So we just have to move it from one side to the other and we spray it down.”
While the transfer station was closed because of the fire, county employees were diverted to alternative work sites, and haulers were directed to dump their loads at landfills, Wooten said.
The blaze also set back the start of the Appliance Amnesty program. The appliance disposal program – free to county residents – is a twice-a-year opportunity for people to unload large, unwanted household items.