A fire on the waterfront at Paper Excellence’s Catalyst paper mill caused excitement and consternation in Port Alberni on Friday, July 7.
A Seaspan barge containing hog fuel was being unloaded at the paper mill when a piece of equipment used in the process caught fire. Hog fuel is wood chips or byproduct used to burn as fuel, especially for biomass-fired power plants.
The thick, black smoke that briefly blanketed the waterfront by the paper mill was from the rubber conveyor belt on the unloader’s conveyor that caught on fire, Port Alberni deputy fire Chief Wes Patterson said. “So it wasn’t the actual hog fuel pile on the barge, it was a piece of equipment on there.”
There were also two excavators on the barge that were undamaged, he added. The fire was called in shortly before 3 p.m., and while crews responded the wind picked up in Alberni Inlet and blew embers from the fire around the site.
“We started having spot fires on the ground,” Patterson said. Some embers landed underneath the sawfiling room and started smouldering. The metal-clad building has wooden floors and is built on pilings, with a space underneath: “lots of areas for fire to travel. It took quite a while to put out.”
Crews from Cherry Creek, Beaver Creek and Sproat Lake volunteer fire departments responded, as did BC Ambulance Service—29 firefighters in total, as well as Catalyst personnel trained in firefighting. There were no injuries, Patterson said.
San Group arranged to have two Timberrose Tug and Barge tugboats on standby with their water equipment in case the barge needed to be pulled away from the dock, San Terminals manager Joe Spears said. “I first learned of the fire when I went to my window and it turned dark. I was in my office in San at 4000 Stamp,” which is close to where the barge was moored behind Paper Excellence. San Group’s remanufacturing plant is located beside the paper mill.
“Our part was very small…we’re neighbours helping neighbours,” Spears said.
The Harbour Chieftain fireboat, owned in partnership between the Port Alberni Port Authority and Port Alberni Fire Dept., was not used to fight this fire. “If there was a role for the Chieftain to play we would have brought it over,” Patterson said.
“The benefit for us is (the barge) was tied up at the unloading facility; we didn’t have to go on the barge. We needed a fair amount of water and more water than what the Chieftain can provide.”
While crews were dealing with the barge fire, a call came in about a bush fire on Wallace Street. City of Port Alberni staff and RCMP members managed to get the nine-metre-square fire under control by the time a fire crew arrived to extinguish it.
Meantime, crews back at the barge fire were expected to clear out shortly after 7 p.m. Mill crews will remain on fire watch at the site overnight in case of flareups, Patterson said.
susie.quinn@albernivalleynews.com
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