Environcom hit by second fire this year
A fire broke out at the processing site of waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) recycler Environcom on Saturday (17 May), the second such incident to happen at the site this year.
Lincolnshire Fire & Rescue (LFS) sent 10 pumping appliances and an aerial ladder platform to a ‘large factory fire’ at Environcom’s WEEE recycling plant in Great North Road, Grantham on Saturday evening.
The incident was scaled down later that night, as six pumps remained on site to extinguish the flames.
By Sunday morning, just two crews remained at the scene to ‘dampen down’ hotspots, and left later that day to leave the incident to the ‘on-site management’.
Although the fire crew said the fire caused ‘severe damage by fire to the recycling plant machinery and a large quantity of recycling materials, and by smoke to whole of factory’, Environcom said there was ‘limited damage and no casualties’.
An investigation has started to determine the cause of the fire, which began at about 8 o’clock on Saturday evening.
‘Environcom is operating business as usual’
The fire is the second at the recycling plant this year as it was hit by another blaze in February.
Sean Feeney, CEO of Environcom explained: “There was a fire at the Grantham Environcom site on Saturday night, which was contained quickly thanks to the Lincolnshire Fire Brigade.
“This fire was in a separate part of the building to the previous one. Having assessed the situation over the weekend I can confirm there are no casualties and limited damage, restricted to the fabric of the building. Further to a meeting with the Fire Brigade, Environcom is operating business as usual today (Monday 19thMay).
“Since I took over the running of Environcom in 2010, I have made Health and Safety my number one priority and we have rigorous systems in place to minimise fire risk. We have regular meetings with the Fire Brigade to review our systems and implement their recommendations. I have a whole team looking at this so we can avoid any future incidents.”
Tackling waste fires
Waste site fires are commonplace, with figures released last year showing that between 2001 and 2012, the average rate of fires at waste and recycling works came in at just under one per day.
Indeed, just last month a fire broke out at Taylors Environmental Recycling Services in Hull, while a ‘large fire’ involving more than 100 fire fighters at recycling firm Tradpak Recycling in Leeds also hit headlines.
To reduce the outbreak of fire at waste storage sites, the EA has released guidance that identifies a range of measures that operators of waste storage sites should implement to minimise the risk of fire.
However, Mark Tansey of fire detection supplier FireVu recently told Resource that the guidanceneglects to mention fire detection and prevention technology, which he says is an ‘essential step’ to stalling and extinguishing fires.
Read more about the EA guidance or Mark Tansey’s Comment piece.
