Air quality improves at site of fire, blast

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

CHAMPION — Eliminating most of the remaining smoke and lifting the evacuation order resulting from the fire at a Champion plastics warehouse fire may occur as early as this morning, Champion’s fire chief says.

Fire Chief John Hickey said Wednesday afternoon that the heads of the agencies working at the scene will meet at 7 a.m. today to determine whether conditions warrant removal of the evacuation order.

Hickey said he expects the plume of smoke that has been above the site since Monday afternoon to be gone by then.

Hickey said monitoring at the site throughout Wednesday indicated the air quality was safe enough for the 100 nearby residents evacuated Wednesday morning to return to their homes, but he would like to wait until today to be sure.

The main reason for the 4 a.m. evacuation order was that rainy weather Tuesday night had produced dangerous smoke readings, but weather conditions improved greatly Wednesday, Hickey said.

Hickey explained earlier Wednesday that a voluntary evacuation was ordered early Wednesday and was carried out about 3:30 a.m. Residents living within about a half-mile from the Monday afternoon fire at the InterGroup International Ltd. warehouse were told they could relocate to the Champion Presbyterian Church on Mahoning Avenue.

School was also canceled Wednesday at LaBrae schools a short distance away.

Trumbull County Haz-Mat director Don Waldron said smoke from the fire continued to rise throughout the day Tuesday and became more dangerous around midnight because of rain showers that smothered the smoke and created foglike conditions.

Hickey, Waldron and J.J. Justice of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said air-quality instruments indicated that the smoke was reaching dangerous levels and presented the potential to become worse.

Waldron said the only health risk from the smoke is a scratchy throat or eye irritation that would go away if the person were to go inside. The smoke isn’t likely to cause sickness, he said.

The evacuation was suggested after Hickey, Waldron and Justice met with Champion and Warren township trustees sometime after midnight because of high pH levels detected on monitoring devices around the warehouse. The pH in the air came from the smoldering plastics, Waldron said.

Justice, whose office is in Westlake, said the fire at the InterGroup International Ltd. 42,000-square-foot warehouse on Kincaid East Road, just northwest of Warren, contained about 1 million pounds of plastic when it caught fire Monday around 5 p.m. He said he’s not aware that the company has committed any fire code violations.

Around 115 firefighters from 20 departments responded to the fire Monday afternoon, but officials concluded that such a fire was best left to burn as hot as possible, so relatively little water was used, Hickey said. The building was “filled to the gills” with plastics, he said.

A private company hired by InterGroup is handling the cleanup now, Waldron said, working round-the-clock to dismantle the structure and remove the material from inside.

Officials still do not know what caused the fire, which produced explosions when propane tanks used to power forklifts exploded sometime after the fire started. No injuries or illnesses have been reported.

InterGroup took over operations at the former Bloom Industries plastics manufacturing facility in September. The company is a broker of recycled plastic.

John Scott of the Trumbull Chapter of the American Red Cross said around 40 people had come to the Champion Presbyterian Church on Mahoning Avenue between 3:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. Wednesday after they were advised to leave their homes around 4 a.m.

By 7:30 a.m. about 10 evacuees remained there, including Jeff and Lillie Hubbard of Leavitt Drive, one of the streets evacuated.

Their five boys between the ages of 9 and 15 didn’t have school today at LaBrae, so the boys were playing basketball inside the recreation hall at the church. Cots lined the walls in the hall.

runyan@vindy.com