Indiana Recycling Plant Was Cited Before Huge Fire Erupted, Prompting 2,000 to Evacuate: Officials
An Indiana recycling plant that caught on fire Tuesday and prompted the evacuation of more than 2,000 people was cited in the past for being unsafe, said officials in Richmond, adding that some 1,000 are under evacuation orders.
Richmond Mayor Dave Snow told reporters that the owners of the plant “ignored” an order to “clean up this property,” noting that what was “operating here was a fire hazard.” The mayor said that the owner of the property and business was negligent and responsible for the damage, and he was adamant that the business owner would be held accountable.
An evacuation order affecting more than 1,000 people was expected to remain in place through Wednesday around a large industrial fire as crews worked through the night to douse piles of burning plastics, authorities said.
A representative for Wayne County Emergency Management Office told news outlets the evacuation zone in Richmond impacts about 2,011 residents. Officials said that anyone downwind of the fire should shelter in place.
“The smoke is definitely toxic,” Indiana State Fire Marshal Stephen Jones told reporters on Tuesday. “We don’t want the residents in the smoke. As the wind changes we may change the direction of the evacuations.”
Fire Chief Tim Brown told news outlets on Wednesday the recycling plant was given a citation in the past for safety reasons. The city was also pushing to clean up the building for some time prior to the fire.
The building is a former Hoffco-Comet Industries plant, which produced lawn and garden products before it was shut down in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Jones said the facility now has plastic recyclables.
During Wednesday’s news conference, Snow said the name of the business that had operated at the property was called “MyWay Trading.” He didn’t provide further details about the business or the owner of the property.
Brown, the city’s fire chief, said that the 175,000-square-foot facility was “completely full from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall” with materials. “There’s plastics inside buildings, there’s plastics outside buildings, there’s plastics in semitrailers that are throughout the grounds here at the complex, so we’re dealing with many type of plastics. It’s very much a mess,” Brown said.
“There’s a host of different chemicals plastics give off when they’re on fire, so it’s concerning,” Jones also told reporters Tuesday.
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official, Jason Sewell, told reporters Wednesday that testing as of Wednesday had not identified toxic compounds, including styrene or benzene. Air quality monitoring was implemented, Sewell said, adding that there is “24 hours a day” testing.
Aaron Stevens, a Richmond police officer who lives six blocks from the plant, said he first heard the sirens Tuesday before he saw the pillar of smoke from his backyard that blocked the afternoon sun. The smoke came with an acrid odor and he said ash then fell on his deck and backyard.
“It was blocking out the sun completely,” he said. “The birds were going crazy.”
Despite the evacuation warning, Stevens said he plans on staying put after recently suffering an injury. His sister who lives at their childhood home, which is closer to the plant and in eyesight of the flames, came to stay with her brother to escape the smoke. Stevens said he plans on keeping an eye on the changing updates around the smoke.
President Joe Biden, who has been visiting Northern Ireland and Ireland, spoke by phone to Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and offered his support and any additional federal assistance needed to respond to the fire, the White House said.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the federal agency was working closely with its state and local partners in responding to and monitoring the fire. He said an EPA team would be collecting samples of debris in the area Wednesday “to determine whether asbestos-containing materials may have left the site.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
