"We had heavy fire and smoke from the roof.."

A common question we ask workers on our plant tours is “when was the last time you had an evacuation drill?” If the worker can’t respond quickly. We know the plant needs to hold one soon. Here is a recent incident that could have been a horrific tragedy if not the workers quickly and safely evacuated their workplace.

 

Lieutenant County Fire-Rescue officer said the blaze was called in minutes before 3 p.m. The facility is located at (address omitted).

 

"It's too early to tell what may have been the cause of this," he said. The fire consumed a large portion of the facility's roof and also damaged parts of the building. Some of the roof collapsed, Lieutenant County Fire-Rescue officer said. Black, billowing smoke could be seen for miles after the fire started as several fire crews battled the flames.

"We had heavy fire and smoke from the roof and different portions of the building," Lieutenant County Fire-Rescue officer said.

He said it would be several hours before the fire is extinguished.

Prior to the arrival of firefighters, Lieutenant County Fire-Rescue officer said the entire building had already been evacuated by management. "They were all out ... and then we confirmed everybody was out of the structure, so we knew there were no victims in there," he said.

Numerous departments responded to the scene for the large industrial fire. “These big, open manufacturing industrial buildings have a lot of movement that the fire can take, and that’s what can allow them to spread as quickly as it did here.”

 

(The workplace) is a supplier of high-quality metal packaging for beverage, food and household products customers, and of aerospace and other technologies primarily for the U.S. government, according to the (local) Regional Chamber of Commerce website.

When we were first made aware of the fire, we prayed all of the workers got out safely. Because this is a classic example of a fire in such that it generates huge quantities of smoke. The smoke generation is so quick that it can fill workplaces making evacuation difficult. Sadly, we have reported on workers getting confused and lost in workplaces and dying from smoke inhalation. We are also thankful that the fire happened during the day time because at night the evacuation would have been more difficult.

Lastly, it is imperative that you keep basic employee records outside of your workplace in case something like this happens. In so much, that when an incident of this magnitude occurs where are the records showing the shift schedule and who is working today? If your reply is “on the computer, in our network”. We would counter the fire and police department need to know now. How are you going to access you’re the network on your phone? Does your phone have a printer?

This facility was destroyed. We pray that it will be rebuilt. So what happened? The fire marshall has not released a report of the incident on the source of the fire. We would assume that the fire ignited grease, oil residues on the surface of the roof. 

There was a past article on the topic of fire drills and evacuations. It can be found here:

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