"fire was finally extinguished after more than four hours...."

Sometimes even large aluminium plants’ own fire departments need outside assistance. Here is a story from early in the year how outside help was needed to extinguish a fire: 

As the fire department announced, chips and dust had ignited in a metal bunker. Means of production were stored there. 

Due to the location of the fire, the extinguishing measures were difficult because the fire could not be reached directly. In order to reach the source of the fire, the sheet metal cladding of the metal bunker was partially disassembled. 

Despite this dismantling, the extinguishing agents hardly showed any effect, which is why the aluminium works fire brigade requested support in fighting the fire with special extinguishing agents. 

Using the special extinguishing agent for metal fires, the fire was finally extinguished after more than four hours. A fire watch was then set up by the plant fire brigade.

Nobody was injured, the police have started investigations into the cause of the fire. 

We are glad no one is injured in this fire. The aluminium plant in this incident is located in Europe. We chose to omit the company name and location because we are going to be critical of their actions.

Stepping on the proverbial soap box. Here it is. We are shocked to say the least that this incident occurred. Not that the aluminium plant’s own fire department could not extinguish the fire on their own. But, because the aluminium plant did not have the proper fire extinguishing agent on hand. That was the primary reason for the aluminium plant’s call to outside fire brigades. How can a large aluminium plant not have drums, totes, large containers filled with sand, bone ash, etc.? We acknowledge that the plant might have had extinguishing agent but when the fire was not contained, they asked for local assistance who bring “special extinguishing agent”.

Our gut tells us (and we will reach out to the plant and ask) that they simply did not have enough class d fire extinguisher agent.

If your plant relies on outside assistance to extinguish metal fires you are making a colossal mistake. Unless the aluminium company pays for the extinguishing agents and asks the local fire brigade to stock the material. No fire brigade has enough fire extinguishing agent to put out a metal fire in our plants.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog posted an incident where an aluminium plant had a fire above a furnace in the casthouse. It took over 35 class D fire extinguishers to put out the fire. The aluminium plant had 4, fire trucks had a few. The remaining were borrowed from all the other factories in this small town in the USA.

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