Saturday afternoon at approximately 5.30pm a member of the public called in to 000 the building fire on Morton Street, Chinderah. Fire crews arrived to black smoke billowing out of the large factory building.
‘By the time the crews got here from Kingscliff and Banora Point the fire was already well advanced, and it was emitting large amounts of black smoke,’ NSW Fire and Rescue Inspector Price Conlon who is based at Ballina, told The Echo.
‘When they got here they were confronted by a well-developed fire. They set about their work in extinguishing it and called in further resources to help with the fire fight.’
The building was approximately 60 metres by 20 metres. It is a steel construction and has three separate occupants: landscape supply, production parts storage, and some offices.
The fire was finally extinguished at 12.15pm Monday and the process saw over 100 firefighters attend the scene.
‘The main object that was on fire was actually mulch. So it’s a natural product without any hazardous runoff,’ said Inspector Conlon.
The mulch was to the rear of the building, but due to the fact the structure was unstable the firefighters were unable to enter the building.
NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) provided assistance on Saturday afternoon. A hydraulic platform brought in by the Queensland fire department for aerial fire fighting could not be used correctly because the roof was intact.
‘So we’ve managed to extinguish the fire with our usual fire engine using large diameter hoses with a large volume of water to penetrate into these mulch piles,’ said Inspector Conlon.
‘We used the pressure of the volume of water to knock the products around, and that actually allowed us to penetrate into the mulch file.’
Several caravans and a vintage car and truck were also lost in the fire.
Investigations are continuing into the cause of the fire.
‘We consider it to be a successful fire operation, first and foremost, a very dangerous one, and we had no injuries to any of our firefighters, which is always a massive win for us,’ said Inspector Conlon.
‘It’s a very dangerous occupation, and the utilisation of our local resources was well done. We’ve used a lot of our resources from right across the north coast, and then also had the assistance of Queensland Fire Department and friends from the RFS. So the fact that no one was injured, no members of the public were affected and it’s just a loss of the structure and those contents. It’s a good result for the public this week.’
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