Explosion, fire at metal recycling plant ruled accidental

APPLETON (Scrap Monster):  Madison Fire Department investigators Thursday concluded that an explosion and subsequent fire that burned for close to seven hours Wednesday outside a South Side metal recycling plant was accidental.

But the cause of the blaze at All Metals Recycling, 1802 S. Park St., remained unknown, as fighting the stubborn, hard-to-reach fire inside a 30-foot-tall by 40-foot-wide pile of scrap metal may have permanently obscured its ignition source, Fire Chief Steve Davis said.

“The way we had to disassemble the pile to extinguish the fire, any form of evidence we might have found is pretty much destroyed in the process,” Davis said. “It’s going to go down as accidental with an undetermined cause.”

The company processes cars, appliances and other metal items by draining fluids, removing tires and batteries, and otherwise stripping the items down to scrap metal to be crushed and then transported off the site. The company was closed for cleanup Thursday but was to reopen Friday, company manager A.J. Vedvig said.

One working theory investigators have is that the explosion and fire may have been caused by the failure of a compressed gas cylinder or the unintentional release of compressed gas from some other source in the scrap pile, made up mainly of automobiles.

“The investigators guess there was probably some form of a flammable liquid that ignited, from a gas tank the operator (of equipment at the site) wasn’t aware of or from an acetylene torch in a (vehicle) trunk,” Davis said.

Investigators finished digging through debris at the facility and turned it back over to the owner at 10 a.m. Thursday, Davis said. The fire, which started after an explosion at around 4 p.m. Wednesday that shook buildings for blocks, was put out by 11 p.m., with a reduced crew watching for flareups until 6 a.m., Davis said.

Fire officials want to speak further with employees of the company, which opened in 2010, following decades of similar metal recycling operations at the roughly 100,000-square-foot industrial site just south of the Beltline.

“The (chief) investigator still wants to interview additional people about what happened, what machinery might have been running and what was being moved around,” fire department spokeswoman Cynthia Schuster said. “Heat in the form of friction from a grapple crane (used to move items around the scrap yard) cannot be ruled out.”

Company employees helped firefighters open up parts of the unwieldy scrap pile, which contained an estimated 20 to 30 semi-trailer loads of material, so foam and water could be sprayed inside to put out the fire.

“It’s heavy material and it’s not easily moved,” Davis said. “We had to work with All Metals — they had their grappling hooks and we really just did it in layers.”

“It was like a piece of tiramisu,” Davis added.

The state Department of Natural Resources also visited the fire scene Wednesday night because of concerns about runoff from the property, Davis said.

DNR officials planned to take samples and monitor area lakes for pollutants.

State law requires salvage dealers and recyclers to be licensed by the Department of Transportation and to register with the DNR for storm water and refrigerant recovery permits. State officials Thursday confirmed All Metals Recycling had a state license and its permits.

The DOT’s Division of Motor Vehicles also does periodic inspections of salvage and recycling operations.

Mark Sier, statewide supervisor for the DMV’s field investigation unit, said the most recent periodic inspection at All Metals was Sept. 24, 2015, followed by a brief “stop-by” contact recorded on Jan. 19.

Sier could not immediately access the company’s inspection records in detail, but he said they appeared to have flagged no major issues.

Fire department inspectors also do biennial fire safety reviews at all businesses in the city. Davis said the department had inspection records going back to 2010 for All Metals, but the inspector involved could not be reached Thursday.

There were no injuries from the fire and explosion, but thick clouds of gray-black, particulate-laden smoke darkened the skies for hours and could be seen for miles. An acrid smell from the fire also was noticeable for some distance.

Officials said air pollution concerns were addressed Wednesday by Public Health Madison and Dane County through periodic discussions with experts from the fire department and the state Department of Health Services.

No public alerts were sent out and no air-monitoring equipment was set up, said Doug Voegeli, director of environmental health for the city-county health department, who described the monitoring that was done as “strictly empirical and observational.”

Voegeli said it was felt that the bulk of the fire was put out quickly enough that special precautions and testing equipment weren’t needed. Avoiding the smoke by shutting doors and windows is typically enough for “short-duration events” such as the fire on Wednesday, he said.

“The farther away you get, the more diluted the smoke becomes, and it’s less and less of an issue,” Voegeli said. “The dilution of the air with the smoke would have brought those particulate levels down fairly quickly, even in the immediate neighborhood.”

Courtesy: http://host.madison.com