FREMONT – A fire at the main Crown Battery manufacturing plant was contained to two structures without injury.
The Fremont Fire Department was called at 10:16 a.m. on March 9, and finished by 12:30 p.m. Two structures caught fire and were both extinguished. There was no damage to the main Crown Battery building.
“Structure fire is a little bit misleading about that fire. They have what’s called a bag house. It’s basically a filtration system,” Fremont Fire Chief Paul Halbeisen said. “They have designated air flow from certain machines within the manufacturing facility that pulls from those machines because it’s contaminated air. It goes into what we call a bag house. It’s its own structure, separate from the building, but it is connected through duct work and piping.”
He explained that there are large filtration tubes that remove contaminants and into a large HEPA filter before the air gets released. The bag house resembles a big metal hopper. The second structure that caught fire was the HEPA filter house. It was not so much a building as a large shipping container.
“When they have a spark, and they have spark arresters to mitigate that, but it’s not 100%. So, when a spark gets in there, when it gets into the bag house, there is so much air flow that all it takes is one little spark,” Halbeisen said. “The process is what it is, and they do whatever they can to mitigate any hazards, but it is a process that has the possibility of a spark.”
Halbeisen said that, in his 23 years with the Fremont Fire Department, this is his fourth time working on a similar fire. However, systems put in place since previous fires has meant longer periods of time between each incident.
“Thankfully, the mitigation tactics have definitely changed the situation,” Halbeisen said. “They have shutoff systems that they never had before.”
He added that Crown Battery has a fire suppression system and hazmat team that cut the airflow off within the duct work and piping. That prevents a loss in the main building, but all the filters have to be replaced. He had no idea what that cost would be.
“They will have to start over with all-new filters, so that is a total loss,” Halbeisen said. “Once that spark gets into the bag house, all the filters catch on fire. They kind of burn out. What we do is it’s a collection process. We do everything that we can to collect all the water runoff and all the contaminants into 55-gallon drums, and it’s doing what it’s designed to do. Then they dispose of it properly through the chain of their systems of disposal. It just takes time to do it as systematically as possible so there is no release of contaminants.”
The three fire departments worked with Crown personnel. Halbeisen said that it takes longer than a normal fire of similar size due to collecting potentially hazardous material.
“Everything was mitigated on-site. No water got into the storm system,” Halbeisen said. “[Crown Battery] took care of everything on-site. I was pretty impressed with their response as well.”
Halbeisen said the plant on Majestic Drive, on the northeast side of Fremont, was not evacuated.
“Because it was outside structures from the building, and with their mitigation that cuts everything off, once a fire does start, nothing inside the main building gets affected,” he said. “We went in with our thermal imaging cameras and checked all the duct work that was in any way tied to the bag house.”
In addition to the Fremont Fire Department, the Sandusky Township Volunteer Fire Department and Ballville Township Volunteer Fire Department also responded under the mutual aid contract.
rlapointe@gannett.com
419-332-2674
This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Crown Battery fires put out without contamination
Reporting by Roger LaPointe, Fremont News-Messenger / Fremont News-Messenger
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