The Three Day Burn

jstuedle · Oct 26, 2005

A few pics from a fire we had back in July.

About noon today (July 7, 2005) a fire started in the first floor of Consolidated Plastics, a plastic recycling facility. Greendale fire and rescue responded to an alarm at approximately 12:12 and arrived on scene within 12 min. according to the Greendale fire chief.

The fire burned throughout the afternoon and well into evening. Fire crews estimated the temp. inside the building at 1200F. Water had no effect on the pools of hot plastic. The fire was burning as night fell and we went to press.

The fire that started yesterday in Greendale still burns this morning as seen from the Lawrenceburg side of the river.

The fire has spread to the entire first floor and tons of plastic burn filling the air with fowl smelling smoke. Fire crews are seen here spraying a curtain of water to prevent the next building from the same fate.

This fire crew from the Cincinnati suburb of Woodlawn sprays water on the fire in an attempt to contain it to only one building.

A loosing battle as the second floor is now fully involved where many tons of processed plastic is stored. The top two floors are said to be empty.

Day three. As small fires burn themselves out the burned out hulk of what was Consolidated Plastics of Greendale, In. the state fire marshal investigates the cause of this tragic fire. 18 fire companies from Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana responded to help contain this fire.

This was my verbiage, the editors cut most of it. This appeared in a small local paper published here. I gave the volunteer companies prints for there "Glory Wall" as a little PR. In September the building was demolished. It had been originally built for a distillery and was said to be "fire proof". They built it to withstand the quick flash of an alcohol fire, not 3 1/2 of hot plastic burning at over 1200 degrees.

LizM · Oct 26, 2005

I love the one with the rainbow!!!

elsaspet · Oct 27, 2005

The rainbow shots are great!

jstuedle · Oct 27, 2005

Thanks, I got lucky with the rainbows. The sun was only in the correct place to produce them for about 15 min. We watched this fire for the biggest part of 3 days waiting for it to collapse, never happened. It was amazing to watch them pore water on it and have it turned to steam before it ever hit the fire.

I'm surprised more comments wern't made, guess fires arn't as sexy as sports cars. :er: Oh well, maybe next time.

Alison · Oct 27, 2005

Wow, really great series! The 5th really held my attention for a long time, very nice work!

terri · Oct 27, 2005

You did a great job here. :thumbup: Very nice captures! I find a lot of drama in this series. Knowing that it was a plastics recycling facility makes me think of how badly toxic that smoke must have been. Wow!

Did they ever determine the cause of the fire?

jstuedle · Oct 28, 2005

At first they had thought it was caused by an electrical short in a new piece of equipment. They have ruled that out and so far the cause is listed as unknown. And yes, the smoke was very nasty. At the time we had a spat of still, sticky air as we often do in July. In a nearby town about 14 miles away, they awoke to that smoke settling down at ground level on the morning of day two.

terri · Oct 28, 2005

ugh - I can't imagine waking up to that smoke in the middle of July. Very nasty. I hope they can get it resolved, there is something troubling about "cause unknown" with huge fires like this.

Anyway - terrific shots here. :thumbup: You really captured the drama going on.