Discarded battery likely cause of Coaldale recycling centre blaze
By Lethbridge Herald on July 31, 2024.
Herald photo by Justin Sibbet
Firefighters spray a jet of water into the flames at the 2Point0 recycling centre yard on Friday in Coaldale.Delon Shurtz
Lethbridge Herald
A discarded battery that shouldn’t have been sent to the 2Point0 recycling facility in Coaldale in the first place, is the likely cause of a fire that broke out there Friday afternoon.
While an official cause of the fire has not been announced, Tyler Beaulieu of the company says sparks from a battery that was not detected in a load of recyclables is the probable cause of the blaze. Fortunately, he says, the fire only burned the wind fence that runs from the north end of the property, and some pond liner nearby that hadn’t been processed yet.
“No buildings, no equipment, and no injuries to people that I’m aware of,” Beaulieu confirmed.
“I’m very, very thankful for all of that, for sure.”
Beaulieu, who was using a large loader and other equipment to move material in the yard away from the fire, said he suffered some smoke inhalation and has a sore throat, but no one else has reported any ill-effects from the fire.
“Luckily for us the only thing that was destroyed was product that was being processed, and we’re about 95 per cent sure it was a battery that did it.”
Beaulieu said metal detectors and sorters missed the battery, which exploded just before 3 p.m. during processing, causing sparks to ignite nearby material.
The initial fire was immediately noticed and extinguished, but Beaulieu believes the strong wind carried some sparks further away and they ignited another fire.
“It was caught quickly, put out quickly, and then once it was out we realized a spark had carried further away than we could get to. We tried to, we tried to get there, but with the wind and everything else we’ve had, it started to spread.
“So rather than try to be heroes, we called the fire department and cleared the area.”
The facility was open and operational Monday, but Beaulieu said it will likely be shut down temporarily while the site is cleaned, assessed and plans made to move forward.
Fire crews from Coaldale, Picture Butte, Coalhurst and Taber responded to the fire which, Beaulieu believes, prevented the fire from spreading and becoming much worse.
“I’d like to thank the fire department and the volunteers that came out because they were quick in their response, and because of the work everybody did, we were able to limit damage to any buildings and damage to persons and damage to equipment to zero.”
Beaulieu spent about 40 hours at the facility between Friday and Saturday before he went home to eat and grab a few hours of sleep.
When he returned about 5 a.m. Sunday, the fire had been extinguished.
“By then it was out, just a little bit still smouldering, and I was staring at it, like, I thought this was on fire. There wasn’t as much gone as I thought. The response was so good from the fire department, from all of them, and the town was really, really good on top of their water supply.”
18-17
Recycling facilities need to invest in more advanced technology to prevent similar build now gg incidents in the future. Props to the fire department for their quick response and the company for their transparency.