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.”
A sprinkler system is being credited with preventing a potentially large fire last Thursday evening at the Newark Manor Nursing Home on West Pearl Street.
Dick Colacino, the Newark Volunteer Fire Department’s public information officer, said firefighters responded to the site following an automatic box alarm and calls to 911. Assistant Chief Kevin Velte, who was first on the scene, reported smoke in the building and Chief Gerald VanDewalle called for mutual aid from Fairville and Lyons to assist with possible evacuation.
The cause was determined to be a portable air conditioner that caught fire. The blaze was doused by a sprinkler in a data closet housing the nursing home computers, preventing more extensive damage.
VanDewalle said a combination of the automatic smoke and fire alarm system, and a working sprinkler, prevented a much more serious incident. There was fire and smoke damage in the data room, as well as damage to computers and other equipment.
VanDewalle commended nursing home staff, firefighters, Newark police and EMS personnel for evacuating and isolating residents. Thirty-five firefighters were at the scene for more than two hours, clearing smoke from the building with fans.
Colacino said the working sprinkler system is a testament of their value, and firefighters are disappointed that the state Legislature has not passed a fire sprinkler law for all new one- and two-family homes.
A fire Thursday night damaged a studio in the Fine Arts Building at SUNY New Paltz, and the building will be closed until Monday, according to the college. The Graphic Design Thesis Show, from 4-7 p.m. Friday in the building’s rotunda, was scheduled to go on as planned, however, according to a message sent to students, staff and faculty.
The fire began in the building’s wood and sculpture studio, on the first floor, according to a statement from the college. There were no injuries. Firefighters responding to an automatic alarm and reports of smoke in the building discovered “heavy smoke and heat” in the first-floor hallway, the New Paltz Fire Department said Friday on its Facebook page.
They then found the blaze and extinguished it, the department said. The fire department credited “a well maintained sprinkler system” with containing the blaze to the room in which it began. The building’s fire alarm system was back in service Friday, according to the college.
An email sent to the college community Friday afternoon said the Fine Arts Building’s studios were closed to students but were expected to reopen Monday morning. No one will be allowed to work in the building until Monday as personnel repair water damage, the email stated. Information about how the fire might have started and what time it was reported was not immediately available
Stop and Shop in East Hampton Village reopened Wednesday evening after a fire broke out in a mechanical room hours earlier.
East Hampton Fire Department Chief Richard Osterberg Jr. said a sprinkler system helped to contain the fire, which appeared to have been caused by debris, such as cardboard, that had been placed too close to a generator.
Employees at the grocery store at 67 Newtown Lane called 911 when they saw smoke, which had spread to the main part of the store, the chief said. They got customers out of the building, he said. Simultaneously, police dispatchers received a call from the alarm company about an automatic fire alarm that had been activated. Smoke was coming out of the back of the store, though it was hard to see because it is up against trees in Herrick Park, he added.
Gerry Turza, the second assistant chief, was the first chief to arrive, and he began “an aggressive interior attack” of the fire, Chief Osterberg said. Within 15 minutes, firefighters used 350 feet of hose to douse the flames “before damage really spread,” he said. Only some of the contents of the room, which also contains refrigerator compressors and circuit breakers, were damaged. The building itself was not compromised.
Chief Osterberg notified the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, which oversees grocery stores, because there was a risk of food contamination from the smoke that spread to the store. He said a representative was to visit the store from the Brooklyn office and would have to sign-off on the reopening.
A Stop and Shop representative could not immediately be reached, but an employee at the store Wednesday evening said it had reopened around 6:30 p.m.
Managing the fire scene was no easy task, as the store is located in the middle of the village business district, off the busy Reutershan parking lot, with many cars and people coming and going, the chief said. The East Hampton Village Police Department was a tremendous help, he said, in closing off the parking lot to additional cars and keeping the entrances open for fire trucks to get through. “P.D. was really phenomenal,” he said.
The Stop and Shop staff of about 20 was also helpful; they didn’t panic, they evacuated the building, and then stayed together in the parking lot so that they could all be accounted for and there was no question whether firefighters needed to search for anyone. “They have a plan in place that they do run practice on,” the chief said.
A small fire broke out in a fifth-floor suite of Elliott Hall at 2:20 a.m. on Sunday, with water damage from the sprinkler response affecting rooms on the second through fifth floors of the building.
After students were evacuated from the building following the sounding of the first alarm early Sunday morning, the Diana Center was opened for residents of Elliott Hall to wait in while the building was inspected by Public Safety, according to a resident assistant in Elliott Hall.
The building was cleared for students to re-enter at around 3:30 a.m., but due to the sprinkler system’s response to the fire, the rooms immediately adjacent to the source, as well as the ones located several floors below it experienced flooding. A Barnard spokesperson confirmed that some administrative offices and hallway carpeting were affected by water damage.
According to the RA, who wished to remain anonymous because RAs are prohibited by Residential Life to speak to the press, the flooding was caused by the sprinkler in the source room and not by multiple sprinklers.
Residents living on the fifth floor near the room where the fire began said that aside from some smoke and ash in their rooms, they experienced no significant damage.
The RA said that there was a second fire alert after the building was reopened, but that they thought that it had to do with the alert system and was not indicative of a second fire. It did, however, drive some students from the building for the night.
Fifth-floor resident Maya Edwards, BC ’17, said that, although she did not leave for the night, she knew of students who left to stay with friends in other buildings.
Although Barnard’s emergency alert notification system was not used for the fire, the RA said that they didn’t think that was a problem.
“I feel like it was very contained so I feel like it wasn’t the same magnitude as in the 600s,” the RA said, referencing last year’s fire in 600 West 116th Street.
Facilities is still working to address the problems caused by the flooding, but the building is fully operational, a Barnard spokesperson confirmed
Reporting on lives and property saved by fire sprinklers
