"malfunction of a melt furnace which caused fire..."

Our intentions are not to place blame on a company nor worker(s) when posting about an incident. If the incident involves an injury or fatality we omit the company name and location. Other times when there is no injuries or fatalities we omit the company name if we feel that our commentary could be viewed as negative to the company we omit the company name. But, when we want to offer compliments to a company we include their name. Here is a recent story that we chose to include the company name.

At approximately 2:07 AM on Tuesday, March 6th, the Sheboygan Fire Department was dispatched to a report of a malfunction of a melt furnace which caused fire to escape at Nemak, located Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Firefighters arrived within three minutes of the initial dispatch according to Battalion Chief. “The fire had breached the confines of the furnace and spread to the roof structure surrounding the furnace exhaust vent,” said the Battalion Chief. “Our firefighters worked in conjunction with plant personnel, from the roof and from underneath to expose the areas that had ignited and extinguished the flames.”

These types of fires present challenges in the extinguishing process as firefighters are unable to use water because of the close proximity of molten metal. The snow, wind and cold temperatures also presented difficulties to the firefighting personnel in the roof operations. There is significant damage to the roof area due to the need to expose the structural components that ignited.

No dollar loss is available at this time. No injuries were reported.

We are glad no one was injured in this incident. We hope that production has resumed. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has posted about the importance of communicating with your local fire department (e.g., emergency management services) before an incident occurs. No doubt this Nemak plant had a relationship with their nearby fire departments. We congratulate Nemak Sheboygan and hope they continue communicating with their local fire departments.

The quote above “firefighters worked in conjunction with plant personnel” means so much. Without that assistance from plant personnel the firemen are put at a disadvantage. We have reported incidents where for a myriad of reason the firemen did not have communication with plant personnel. In some incidents the fire department decided to contain the fire. Protecting nearby business from the fire. Resulting in the aluminium factory burning down to the ground. In other incidents firemen were either injured or killed when they unknowingly put water on a dust/fine fire etc. In our opinion there is nothing sadder than the injury or death of an ems responder because of a lack of knowledge of our industry hazards.

The Aluminium Times Magazine had an article about the importance of communicating with local fire departments:

Here is a link to the article.

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