DEFIANCE - A fire swept through a Johns Manville manufacturing plant yesterday, triggering blasts from small propane tanks inside the building and causing extensive damage that is expected to idle the factory for weeks.
The flames and billowing clouds of thick black smoke could be seen for miles.
“It is going to be down a long time,” Defiance Mayor Fred Schultz said while walking the parimeter of the facility in nearby Richland Township to assess the damage.
The plant, which operates around the clock, employs 290 people. Together with two other Johns Manville plants in the city, the company is the area's second-largest employer after General Motors Corp., he said.
Danny Young, 29, who works the midnight shift at the plant, looked at the smoldering ruins.
“This is going to be hard - to find other work that has comparable pay,” he said. “This could be an up-and-relocate situation.”
His father, Dan, also worried about the plant's fate. “We don't know what the future holds,” the elder Mr. Young said. “I have seven years' seniority, and I may be out of a job.”
Plant officials have told employees in recent months the company has been considering plans to modernize the plant with an investment that could be upward of $50 million, his son said.
About 100 employees in the plant escaped unhurt. No firefighters were hurt either.
Plant officials credited the absence of injuries to an effective evacuation plan. Buzzers were sounded when the fire was discovered about 1:30 p.m.
“The central command people were yelling to evacuate areas where it was hard to hear,” said Manny Gamez, superintendent of the plant. “People made sure they got out. If [an evacuation plan] hadn't [been established], you and I would be having a different discussion.”
Neither fire nor plant officials said they knew last night what caused the blaze that began in production rooms in the center of the plant, which produces fiberglass pipe insulation. It's an area at least 50 years old with a wooden saw-tooth roof with a rubber covering.
“It was the roof that really spread the fire,” Mr. Gamez said.
Firefighters initially attacked the blaze from the south side with aerial ladder trucks from Defiance and neighboring Bryan and Archbold.
Other departments set up a water shuttle on the north side of the plant to feed an aerial truck from Napoleon that also attacked flames from overhead.
Defiance Fire Chief Bill Wilkins said the blaze was contained by late afternoon. An overnight fire watch was established to guard against the blaze's rekindling.
Matt Welch of Archbold was one of a group of firefighters who went inside to successfully keep the blaze from spreading east beyond a firewall to a warehouse area where cardboard is stored.
“In the production area, it is pretty much a total loss,” Mr. Welch said. “Right in here,” he said, pointing to the production area, “there is really nothing. About all that is left is the metal frame.”
He said explosions appeared to be from propane gas in small tanks that powered fork lifts in the production complex.
Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick, responding to concerns about possible hazardous fumes from the fire, said officials were assured the smoke presented no health risk.
Air quality in the area would continue to be monitored, he said.
The plant official declined to comment on the extent of the damage.
“At this point, we want to get in and see if anything is salvageable,” he said. Nor would he comment on the effect of the fire on the plant's future. “I can't speculate,” he said.
Johns Manville Corp., of Denver, a $2 billion a year manufacturer of building and specialty products, has three plants in the Defiance area and two in Waterville.
A plant on Perry Street in Defiance employs 300 and manufactures fiberglass insulation materials, and a third facility on Carpenter Road in Defiance produces fiberglass insulation and automotive products with 300 employees, a company spokesman said.
At fire officials' request, CSX Transportation shut down its Willard, Ohio, to Chicago main railroad line that passes next to the plant at 2:05 p.m. so that hoses could be run over the tracks, David Hall, a CSX spokesman, said.
Blade staff writers Jim Sielicki and David Patch contributed to this report.
First Published May 17, 2003, 11:06 a.m.