Stop 37 – The Department Is Tested

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THE ENTIRE RECYCLING FIRE, 2002

At two fifty-four in the morning on January twenty-third, two thousand two, fire broke out in four sixty-four-foot silos at the EnTire Recycling plant on the river front. The silos were packed with shredded and ground-up tire rubber.

The fire was deep inside the silos, where no one could reach it. Crews tried pumping in nitrogen to smother it, but it didn't work. Ten hours in, with the fire thought to be under control, a silo began belching flame. As firefighters were being pulled back, it exploded, spraying burning rubber over three hundred fifty feet. Thirteen of the twenty-five firefighters on scene went to the hospital, and three stayed. Trucks and equipment were damaged too.

With the risk of oil reaching the Missouri River, the Environmental Protection Agency stepped in. A Texas company that specializes in huge fuel fires was brought in, working alongside local firefighters. On January twenty-eighth, two silos toppled over, which actually helped. Crews punched holes in the others and put out the rubber as it poured out.

Then came a two-day snowstorm, with wind chills of twenty-four below. The fire was finally declared out on February first, eleven days later, after more than eleven million gallons of water.

MUTUAL AID PROVES ITSELF

The EnTire fire showed just how much neighbors matter. Thirty-three fire departments from Nebraska and Iowa sent trucks and people. Of the four thousand nine hundred fourteen hours of work it took to fight the fire, nearly half came from mutual aid.

And on the ninth day, while the silos were still burning, another fire broke out, at the Wurtele Budweiser warehouse on the southwest edge of town. Mutual aid was called for tankers, and two engines and twenty-five tankers from nineteen towns answered. That fire was under control in less than an hour.