OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — A three-alarm fire at the plant that handles Omaha's recycling may have been caused by a lithium-ion battery, the company's CEO told 3 News Now.
The fire was reported at 10:24 p.m. Wednesday night and was declared under control by the Omaha Fire Department by 7 a.m. Thursday.
The plant is First Star Recycling, which is officially known as Firstar Fiber. It's located at 103rd and I Streets.
"Recycling centers across the country deal with fires," said Patrick Leahy, the CEO. "It's a nature of the business. And, typically, what you find is a lithium-ion battery at the root cause of it."
Leahy says, though they're not certain, there's reason to believe a lithium-ion battery was the cause. He said there's reason to believe that beyond it being a common cause of other recycling center fires.
The Omaha Fire Department is still investigating the cause.
Firefighter okay after mayday call
A fire captain that made a mayday call for help was found in four or five minutes, said a fire department spokesperson.
"It seems like an eternity," said the spokesperson, Joe Caniglia.
The captain was okay, he said. They were examined and released on scene.
The fire captain fell a few feet into a conveyor belt in the ground, both the fire department and company said.
"In the pitch black and smoke, we don't always see those things," Caniglia said.
Crunched batteries and paper don't mix
The fire likely started in a machine compacting cardboard and paper into bails, Leahy said. He said a battery likely "got crunched" in the bailer, causing it to explode and spark the flammable paper and cardboard.
He said paper and cardboard is mostly what burned. The fire did not extend to parts of the building that handle plastic or metal.
If the cause was a battery in a bailer, the battery was not caught in any of the manual or automatic sorting steps, where staff and machines remove items that shouldn't be there.
"There's multiple points in the line that you're trying to catch this sort of stuff before it happens," Leahy said.
He said they will look into if there's any improvement they can make with the process.
But Leahy suggested Omaha recyclers familiarize themselves with what can and can't be recycled. A guide can be found online at omaharecyclingguide.com.
They do not accept batteries.
"We encourage people to go there," he said. "We maintain it, so it's always up to date."
Limited impact on operations
Though the fire burned throughout the night, he said he expected the plant to be fully staffed by 3 p.m. Thursday.
Outgoing and incoming transports were not impacted. He said recyclers won't notice a change.
"We're able to operate and keep the problem focused on just that area and we have other lines that can operate," Leahy said. "We'll just have to adjust some of our operations."
The company is not yet sure of the extent of material or structural losses, though it did lose a significant amount of cardboard and paper that could have been sold to be recycled.
The fire reached the roof, and firefighters put holes in the roof for ventilation, the Omaha Fire Department said.
3 News Now was at the plant last week for a story that aired on Monday. The company began using the orange Hefty Energy Bags to make plastic lumber. That area of the plant was not impacted.
Previous fires
A fire in December at the same plant was almost certainly caused by "embers" from a heater getting into a paper pile, Leahy said.
Leahy said there had been another similar fire before he was with First Star Recycling.
"It was a rubberized conveyor (then)," he said. But after that the company invested in steel.
"That helped localize the area that was affected," Leahy said.
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