Australia — The cause of a factory fire in Onehunga was accidental, the fire service has determined.
Dark clouds of smoke could be seen across Auckland as the fire took hold at Textile Products around 11am yesterday.
Around 50 firefighters battled the flames into the afternoon and one truck remained at the site until 10pm last night to ensure hot spots didn’t flare up.
Five people were treated for smoke inhalation as a result of the inferno.
Fire safety officer Ray Coleman says a rogue piece of metal got caught in machinery causing sparks which triggered the fire at the factory which manufactures home insulation products.
He says workers discovered the fire in a storage bin which catches the fibre from a shredder.
“They opened the door and saw the fire in the storage bin, they got a hose and tried to extinguish the fire.
“Unfortunately the fire was well established and spread to other material nearby and ultimately they just had to abandon what they were trying to do and get out of there until we got there.”
He says the recycled materials shredded for the insulation product – including carpet, rags and polypropylene – are not overly flammable except for the fact they were loosely packed together.
“It’s a little bit like cotton wool – you wave a match at cotton wool and it’s gone.
“This is similar in there’s a lot of airspace and room for burning to take place – it’s not a solid piece of material.”
He says workers should have called emergency services as soon as they discovered the blaze but says it is “human nature” to do what you can to nullify a fire before it gets out of hand.
Coleman says sprinklers, which were not installed at the factory, could have contained the blaze and would have instantly alerted the fire service.
Magnets within the machinery were in place to catch foreign metal but missed the piece which caused the fire.
Coleman says two “severely damaged” machines are all that remains from the building.
“All the iron, all the roof, all the walls, the floors, the mezzanine were gone and the steel joints had twisted because of the amount of heat involved, so the rear of the factory was utterly destroyed.”
A second building, in front of the destroyed factory, was not damaged and Coleman says the company continues to operate.
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