NEWS

Grain silo fire could take days to extinguish

Ally Marotti
amarotti@enquirer.com

The last grain silo that caught fire in the United States burned for nine days. Evendale Fire Chief Michael Hauck is hoping the one that sparked Friday doesn't last that long.

Crews from Evendale and Sharonville's fire departments have been on the scene at the grain silo at Bunge North America at 2885 East Sharon Road almost non-stop since a spark caused several explosions at about 11:40 a.m. Friday.

The structure on East Sharon Road is made up of 18 grain silos, a structure called a hen house, a horizontal storage building, two large, squat silos, and several other structures. The hen house, which holds the vacuum where the fire sparked, is 214 feet tall. That's equivalent to a 22-story building.

Fire crews must go through all of that space and check for hot spots.

Hauck said no one knows exactly what caused the spark to ignite inside the vacuum, which sucks dust off the grain, Friday, and it most likely could not have been prevented.

Photo of grain elevator explosion from Twitter user @WriteCJ

"It was just that right combination of dust particles in the air and that ignition source," he said.

Hauck said all of his 24 firefighters had been inside the Bunge grain silo, which was built in the 1930s, before the incident occurred. A system that runs water throughout the structure in case of a fire was in place, but wasn't working. Hauck isn't sure why.

Bunge had similar incidents at their facilities located throughout the country, such as the one that burned for nine days, so fire officials "had always known that this potential was here," Hauck said.

Hauck added that these types of incidents are not common and had never occurred at that silo before.

Officials at Bunge were not immediately available Sunday for comment on progress and plans for the structure.

Hauck does not know how long it will take crews to go through the structure and extinguish hot spots. Fire could be located on any of the floors or anywhere in the intricate system of pipes used to transport grain throughout the structure.

As of Sunday afternoon, the only part of the structure that hadn't been cleared was the hen house, which is where all the windows that blew out during the explosion are located.

"We are going floor by floor, pipe by pipe making sure everything is extinguished," Hauck said. "We still have some smoldering of products on the floors."

Crews have cleared the area of any hazardous atmosphere, which helps in the more than 90-degree heat and humidity. They're using a crane to get their equipment to the upper levels of the structure.

Employees evacuated safely after the initial explosion and fire Friday and no one was injured.

The initial explosion came when a spark caused panels on the vacuum to blow. That shook the entire structure, which stirred up dust and caused a bigger explosion, Hauck said.

Company spokeswoman Deb Seidel said Friday that company officials are closely working with fire crews. Several employees were on scene Sunday.

An evacuation order was put in effect for a one-eighth mile radius around the factory to safeguard against the possibility of secondary explosions Friday, Hauck said.

Evacuated workers gather outside the grain silo Friday afternoon.

Tina Joslyn works at Silco Fire & Security located next door to the facility and said fire crews evacuated employees from her business.

"The explosion was enormous, and sounded like one of the semis from Gold Medal next door had run into our building," she tweeted.

"I heard a big boom. We thought it was a thunderstorm. They told us to evacuate the building after lunch and go home," said Robert Duncan, who works nearby at Taylor Distributing Co.

Bunge is an agribusiness business that manufactures and exports food ingredients, animal feed and biofuels products. The company purchased the facility, formerly known as Central Soya, in 2002, Seidel said.

Jennifer Edwards Baker and Rachel Richardson contributed.