Efforts of firemen limit WastAway damage to $10K

By DUANE SHERRILL / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

The WastAway plant, pictured above, may very well have been saved by the tireless efforts of firemen who worked to douse the blaze which broke out Tuesday morning in the plant’s exhaust system. (Duane Sherrill photo)

A marathon fire fighting effort may have saved the WastAway plant Tuesday as early estimates revealed the damage to the facility was limited to around $10,000.

“They did a super job,” said WastAway President Floyd Bouldin of the McMinnville Fire Department’s response to the Tuesday morning fire at the large industrial plant on Belmont Drive. “They got here quick and they were very professional.”

Fire units were on the scene for five hours Tuesday after being summoned to the plant around 10 a.m. when fire broke out in the facility’s exhaust system. The plant converts common waste into building materials and handles Warren County’s household waste processing.

While firemen controlled the main fire quickly, stubborn yet potentially dangerous flames continued to burn in hard to access areas above the building’s sprinkler system. The sprinkler system, which was praised by Bouldin and firemen alike for potentially saving the building from much more serious damage, prevented spread of the fire from the exhaust system.

“Some of the fire was extremely hard to get to,” said McMinnville Fire Chief Kevin Lawrence. “The tough part was that it got into some duct work and wall plating above the sprinkler system so we eventually had to get to it by going through the roof of the building.”

Lawrence said his men used their self-contained breathing apparatus to access the building which was clogged with thick smoke. The cause of the fire is believed to be an electric motor unit in a fan inside the facility’s exhaust unit.

Bouldin said the problem has been corrected and that employees of the plant returned to production Wednesday. Most of Tuesday was spent cleaning up the aftermath of the fire.