Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 23, 1995 TAG: 9503230072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Salem had two fire engines, a ladder truck and a hazardous-materials truck on hand. Roanoke County had an engine there, too - it was called in for backup air supplies. Not to mention the steady stream of Salem Rescue Squad vehicles drifting in and out of the plant's parking lot.
Yet, when the last fire truck rolled away more than four hours after Salem was dispatched on the 8:30 a.m. call, the official line from Yokohama and Salem's Fire Department was: The morning's blaze was no big deal.
"It may have looked like something, but it really wasn't," said Salem Fire Chief Danny Hall.
But the fire, which began when a gauge on the plant's Banbury mixer malfunctioned, sent three people to Lewis-Gale Hospital for observation for smoke inhalation. They were released later in the day. No workers were evacuated.
"This type of fire in Banbury mixing systems is common to our industry," Yokohama said Wednesday afternoon in a news release. But officials did not say how often this has happened at Yokohama.
In the Banbury mixer, rubber is heated and combined with sulfur and other stabilizers to create a stronger material.
A gauge monitors the temperature of the rubber being heated. The rubber is supposed to be expelled from the mixer before it begins to smolder. This time, it wasn't, instead allowing the batch to get increasingly hotter until it burned.
However, the fire was contained within the Banbury mixer's vat, which can hold up to 500 pounds of rubber. No chemicals or other hazardous materials were released, Hall said.
The hazardous-materials truck was called in "as a precautionary measure," he said. And the ladder truck was used to monitor the roof's vents to make sure the fire didn't spread through them.
"It took a short time" to put out the fire, Hall said.
As for the multiple trucks, 15 firefighters dispatched and total time spent on the call, Hall cited the cleanup.
When rubber burns, it gives off carbon dioxide, black smoke and an awful lot of soot, said Don Baird, a Virginia Tech professor of chemical engineering.
"It's just a nasty, black smoke. It's nothing that would be dangerous. ... Tires burn constantly in landfills," Baird said. "In a confined environment, you will have a cleanup problem."
Yokohama has not said how much damage was done.
by CNB