Tire Recycling Business Summit: Up In Smoke

Jerry Swensen, owner of Auburndale (Wis.) Recycling Center Inc., remembers it as the phone call in the middle of the night that he never wanted to get.

In 2000, Swensen received a call at 1:00 a.m. informing him that his tire recycling facility was on fire and that the blaze could be seen from 15 miles away.

Although it took just 15 minutes for the fire to engulf a 350-foot-long wooden structure at the facility, Swensen credits the fire department for moving quickly to push the majority of the tires out of the way of the blaze. “We lost about 10,000 PTEs (passenger tire equivalents) out of about 500,000 on the property at that time,” Swensen told attendees of the Tire Recycling Business Summit, hosted by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) in Rosemont, Ill., in September.

Swensen recommends that tire recyclers include a water retention pond on their properties not only for groundwater compliance reasons, but also to act as a source of water should a fire occur.

In Swensen’s case, a faulty light fixture was determined to be the cause of the fire. At the Four D Corp. plant in Duncan, Okla., the cause of its fire was a shredder spark igniting material stored in a baghouse.

But Four D Vice President of Operations Max Daughtrey says the news was just as unwelcome. “The most devastating word any recycler can hear is ‘fire,’” he told attendees.

In Daughtrey’s case, word of the fire reached him while he was watching the Oklahoma University football team play in Norman, Okla. Although he quickly left the stadium to head to Duncan, he was told on the ride home that there was nothing for him to do: The plant was a total loss.

Daughtrey said he learned that foam will often not work when applied to tire piles, since it may keep flames from shooting out of the top of a pile but will not prevent the smoldering occurring beneath.

He credits his insurance company, equipment supplier Granutech-Saturn and a new fire suppression system from Flamex Inc. for both getting his company back on its feet and also taking steps to minimize a re-occurrence.

Also part of the panel on preventing fires was Doug Smith of risk management firm ESIS, Holly, Mich. Smith urged tire recyclers to obtain a sprinkler system that is specifically designed for their application. He also noted that finer piles of shreds or crumb will stay warmer for longer and must be given time to cool down before being stored in a closed area.