Fire's runoff pollutes lagoon
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
The owner of a Sand Island recycling center that caught fire Friday evening worked yesterday to stem the flow of polluted water into Ke'ehi Lagoon while firefighters finished hosing down stacks of burning rubber and other smoldering debris.
The fire, which started at about 5 p.m. Friday at Island Recycling Inc., consumed the business's football-field-sized lot of tires, cardboard and other materials and sent tall plumes of black smoke billowing over Sand Island.
More than 70 firefighters, including teams of state and federal firefighters, worked around the clock and into the evening hours of yesterday to bring, and keep, the blaze under control.
Although the official cause of the fire has not yet been determined by fire investigators, a state Health Department official said the owner told him the fire started while workers at Island Recycling were feeding tires into a tire shredding machine.
Wires in steel belted tires are known to create sparks while the rubber is being shredded or while the wire is being removed by magnets, said Mike Cripps of the state Health Department's office of hazard evaluation and emergency response.
Nylon and other fibers are released from the tires in clumps called "fluff" he said. These are known to catch fire as they are being vacuumed away from the rubber shreds, he said.
"So the way you deal with this isn't rocket science," Cripps said. "You have fire-suppression equipment and a good plan."
Cripps said the company had fire-suppression equipment, but that it apparently didn't work or didn't work fast enough when the fire started Friday night.
"They just couldn't control it," Cripps said. "It got out of hand."
Nutter said last night that his employees told him the fire-supression equipment, with a 5,000 gallon tank of water, wouldn't start.
"They tried to beat it back with garden hoses," he said, "but the fire traveled too rapidly and came in too close."
Nutter said he didn't know why the equipment wouldn't start.
Because of the fire hazards in tire recycling and the damage done to his tire processing equipment, Nutter said he was considering discontinuing his tire recycling operation.
Yesterday, city and contracted heavy equipment operators bulldozed and backhoed through large stacks of rubber and tires, exposing the undersides of the stacks to water from the firefighters' hoses.
Firefighters took breaks from the heat of the fire and the sun under tents erected in the parking lot of the nearby New Hope Christian Fellowship Church, ate meals served to them by the Red Cross and were checked by teams of paramedics from Emergency Medical Services.
Two firefighters were taken to the hospital yesterday for monitoring after their blood pressure failed to drop to normal rates. Authorities said both were in good condition.
Cripps said runoff from the fire, including petroleum released by the burning tires, made its way into the upper part of Ke'ehi Lagoon, coating the surface and shoreline with a dark scum.
He said he told Nutter that he would be held responsible for the cleanup. Cripps said that early yesterday Nutter hired a contractor, Global Environmental, to install a floating boom that will strain the oil out of Ke'ehi Lagoon.
Workers from Island Recycling will work to clear larger floating debris as it is caught in the boom, Cripps said, and the boom will remain in place while cleanup from the fire continues.
Cripps said the extent and heat of the fire made it too dangerous to begin the cleanup operation Friday night, so he authorized the owner to wait until daylight.
"It was Dante's Inferno out there," he said.
Cripps said the stacks of tires on the premises had posed the greatest danger, both in terms of the fire and the environmental impact.
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
