"one employee actively working to douse the flames..."

On our travels throughout our industry we have notice a trend of aluminium companies hiring workers who have a second job as an emergency management service personnel. From working as police officers, paramedics to firemen many aluminium companies find these employees to a great asset when an emergency occurs. Here is a recent incident where a worker with a background in emergency management services was an asset:

A fire in the shipping area of a stamping plant in was quickly doused thanks to a quick-acting employee.

Two fire crews from responded around 10:00 a.m. on morning during the week of March 11, 2018 to a community outside of Windsor, Ontario.

When crews arrived, 40 employees had evacuated the building, with one employee actively working to douse the flames, which were spewing from some plastic pallets.

According to the fire chief, the employee is a firefighter from one of the county departments and used the cabinet hose to extinguish the flames. The fire was deemed out by 11:00 a.m.

No injuries are reported resulting from the blaze. An investigator is looking for a cause and damage.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog is proud no one was injured in this incident. We are also glad that the fire department was called immediately. All too often we have reported incidents where worker(s) try to extinguish flames and fail to do so. Any delay in contacting the proper ems organization can have deadly consequences.

The news media article does not elaborate on how many pallets there were that caught fire. Many times we have noticed some companies’ yards holding hundreds of pallets for no apparent reason. We caution against holding lots of pallets because we have reported numerous stories where pallets caught on fire. We would recommend having in stock a smaller number of pallets versus the hundred plus that we commonly see plants have.

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