The Anatomy Of A Transfer Station Fire
Ryan Fogelman
Partner @ Fire Rover: Changing The Way The World Fights Its Fires; COfounder/Partner @ COhatch: Strengthening Communities & Improving Lives;
In the past two years, I have published a couple of articles called the "The Anatomy Of A Recycling Facility Fire" and "The Anatomy Of A Wood Recycling Fire" which pieces together snippets of reported information on a fire incident that told an inside story highlighting the layers of a recycling facility and a biomass fire. Based on the positive reception, I bring you the "The Anatomy Of A Transfer Station Fire" You will notice that I have removed all names and identities from the article highlights below since this exercise is meant for the purpose of education of the harmful effects an incident at a Waste Transfer Station can pose.
"For the second time in two months, fire crews were called to the Transfer Station [X] in [City X]."
"Firefighters are battling a dump fire at the [X's] transfer station in [City X]."
"...the last employee left the dump property around 5:30 p.m. Thursday. It's unclear how the fire started."
"The fire began early Friday morning and was still burning when the sun rose."
"The 9-1-1 call came in just before 2 a.m. on Friday from a neighbor."
"With many smoldering piles of garbage inside the building, it took several hours to extinguish the flames."
"Thick columns of smoke and steam could be seen rising from the transfer station."
"[City X] Fire Chief [X] said conditions inside the structure made it particularly difficult to put out the flames."
"The only way to pull it out was bucket by bucket and just hose each bucket down. It was very time-consuming, [which] requires mass amounts of water."
"It was unclear what started the fire."
"Some 75 volunteer firefighters were called in."
"Heavy equipment from the [City X] was brought in to help move around smoldering waste..."
"It's the building where people drop off their garbage before it's loaded up and taken to a landfill."
"It's a transfer station and people bring their household garbage here. Anything they want to throw away they bring it here they dump it and they pay a fee.”
"They have an excavator in there that picks it up and loads it into the trailers and from there they bring it to a landfill."
"That excavator was destroyed in this fire, along with at least three other pieces of machinery."
"...it's the second excavator to burn up here in as many months."
"News did speak with the company's vice President of safety. He said no one was injured, but the company did lose several pieces of heavy equipment in the fire."
"Being municipal waste, he says while there are no hazardous materials stored at the facility, they do not know exactly what was burning inside."
"The most recent fire at the facility occurred just a few months ago."
"No injuries are reported but the steel building sustained a lot of damage and the codes department has condemned it."
"Investigators are looking into what started a fire that broke out overnight at a local dump."
"We were here two months ago when the excavator caught fire inside the structure. It also started a pile on fire. At that time, there were people here and they were able to get the flames knocked down quickly. No one was here tonight, so the fire had quite the head start."
"Because the building is made of steel and concrete, a lot of the smoke and fire was trapped inside."
"It didn't help that it was literally filled with trash, adding fuel to the fire."
"The mountain of junk growing, and growing, and growing."
"According to [Town Supervisor X], the building was "100 percent engulfed" in flames at the peak of the fire, which was difficult to fight due to the lack of hydrants in the area."
"It's tough and it's a long process and requires a lot of water. We do not have hydrants here so we have numerous tankers from agencies here."
"Because people bring all sorts of trash here couches, mattresses, tires, all of this has been burning and billowing into the air. "
"...they will be doing air quality control monitoring in the area as well as taking samples from nearby ponds and water wells."
"It was a pretty big fire. The place was totally destroyed," [City Supervisor X] said, "adding that after his code inspectors investigated the ... facility, they determined it was too damaged to be saved."
"The building has been condemned and must be taken down as soon as possible."
The truth is that these types of fires are occurring to all of us in the Waste & Recycling Industry too frequently and without prejudice. Additionally, Fire Incidents that continue to plague the Waste & Recycling Industry do not discriminate against poorly run operations. Some of the best operators in the Industry are still victims of fire incidents.
Our Fire Rover solution is the only one on the market today that seamlessly integrates military grade thermal detection (not IR, flame or smoke detection), remote human verification and onsite remote targeted application of our cooling wetting agent. We are is currently installed in over 100 waste and recycling facilities across the US and have suppressed over 100 fires at our Clients facility’s within just the past 12 months.
Our solution is a living, breathing layer of protection meant to complement and work within all of the diligence and hard work that safety and operations teams have developed, maintained and continuously improve upon. If you are interested in learning more feel free to message me on LinkedIn or by email at [email protected].
Associate Director H@HFire
6 年Ryan, I have been researching fires in waste streams since 2015 through a series of full scale real fire tests and I am in the process of publishing the result in a PhD. We are in the process of developing built environment solutions for the whole fleet of waste management environments from waste transfer stations to energy from waste power stations based upon our understanding of how fires develop and progress in waste. Angus Sangster Fire Engineer