UPDATE 3:45 p.m. Monday A precautionary shelter in place has been issued.
Wood County E-911 issued the following update Monday afternoon:
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — A massive fire at the Peoples Cartage warehouse just outside of Parkersburg has been contained but authorities said Monday it will take days to get it extinguished.
Lubeck Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mark Stewart is the incident commander on duty. In a conversation with MetroNews, he noted there had been no spread of fire overnight Sunday into Monday.
“It’s contained, and we’re currently operating three high volume fire pumps from the Little Kanawha River and we’re pumping 9,000 gallons a minute onto the fire itself,” he explained.
During the initial hours of the fire, the local municipal water system was drained and crews were forced to shuttle water to the scene from fill up spots. The shuttle included 30 fire tanker trucks travelling to and from the scene with loads of water. Since then, an industrial fire fighting service from Pittsburgh has arrived on scene. SPSI has established a line of water from the Little Kanawha River to the fire to suppress the blaze.
The next step will be to move through the debris of the building, tear apart each individual box, and douse it with water.
“We’re getting equipment in to start doing that now. It’s a minimum of 16 feet deep into the building, of course the building is all collapsed and burned up. Now we’re dealing with the depths of the plastic and resin or whatever it is,” Stewart said.
The building served as storage for plastic pellets, a raw material for making plastic products. They were stored in boxes which were 4 feet by 4 feet. The boxes were stacked 16-feet deep in some parts of the warehouse. It’s in one of those boxes where a fire broke out Saturday. A cause for that initial fire is not known. The building’s fire suppression system contained the flames until the fire department arrived and was able to put out the fire. According to Stewart they had to turn off the sprinklers because they were starting to soak the other boxes and causing them to collapse which created a hazard for those inside.
“We told them the priority one was to get the sprinkler heads changed and the system back up and they needed to do a fire watch until that was completed,” he said.
Workers were pulling out the boxes impacted by the Saturday fire around 5:30 a.m. Sunday. As they opened one box it ignited when it hit the air. It happened before the company had time to reset the sprinkler system and the fire spread rapidly form there. All workers were successfully evacuated from the building.
“It’s going to be a process. We have two excavators in there now and they’re trying to cut a pathway through the middle and get things opened up so we can get in there to work,” he explained.
Stewart expected it would take several days before the scene could be completely declared extinguished.
Meanwhile, the People’s Cartage CEO Doug Sibila issued a statement on the fire:
“On Saturday at approximately 10:40am, July 4, 2026, a fire occurred at our Camden Avenue facility in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The fire was quickly contained and extinguished by our fire suppression systems and the local fire department. A stringent fire watch was maintained throughout the day and overnight. Unfortunately, early Sunday, July 5th, the fire reignited, resulting in significant damage — the full extent of which has not yet been assessed.
Most importantly, at this time, we are grateful to report that no injuries have been sustained by any employees or other individuals on site.
We are cooperating fully with the local fire department and the appropriate local and State authorities, and we will not speculate on the cause of the fire while that investigation is ongoing. We are in direct communication with those affected by this event and are committed to keeping them informed as the situation develops.
The safety of our employees, our customers, our neighbors, and our community is our highest priority. We take that responsibility seriously and are committed to handling this matter with full transparency.”
Air monitoring around the facility continues, but so far there has been no indication the contamination has risen above acceptable levels.