PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — The last work to end a lengthy fire response is happening at the site of the People’s Cartage warehouse in Wood County. Incident commanders declared the fire officially out Tuesday, two and a half days after battling the massive blaze which consumed the entire building.
Wood County Commissioner David Blair Couch said the last of the work was pulling apart pieces of debris and preparing the site to be turned back over to the owners for cleanup.
“They had some long-armed excavators and were digging into the piles to find hot spots to extinguish,” said Couch in an appearance on MetroNews Talkline.
The next step will be the cleanup which will be the responsibility of People’s Cartage. However, the West Virginia State Fire Marshal continued to investigate a cause for the blaze.
The fire started in a container of plastic deep inside the warehouse early Saturday morning. According to fire investigators the fire suppression system held the fire at bay until the fire department could arrive and put it out. The sprinklers were disabled during the response because they were causing the containers to deteriorate and create a safety hazard for firemen and employees.
A day later warehouse employees were removing the damaged boxes and one of them burst into flames when it was pulled out and met with the air. The sprinkler system had not been recharged and allowed the fire to spread throughout the massive building.
Billowing black smoke rolled off the site for three days as fire crews poured thousands and thousands of gallons of water onto the blaze. The smoke created concerns about air quality and the runoff from the fire created concerns about water quality in the region.
The DEP and US EPA Air Monitors detected only small amounts of particulate matter which prompted a precautionary shelter in place order. Couch said so far however, there had been no indication of any long term contamination due to the smoke.
“By all indications it’s nothing different than a house fire. It was plastics, wood, and the outfall they were getting was pure carbon. So whatever it was that burned, it burned up to soot. It still doesn’t mean people are not concerned,” he said.
But that isn’t settling the matter for many who claim their homes and property are covered in a think layer of soot and residue. A Charleston law firm has filed the first lawsuit over the fire in U.S. District Court in Southern West Virginia. They are proposing the suit for class action status for all who were impacted by the fire.
Fire crews from throughout West Virginia and some from Ohio and Pennsylvania were called to the scene to assist with the event and to give weary local firefighters a break.