“We pride ourselves in ‘safety is number one,’ and it worked tonight,” said Mark Paup, president and CEO of Zippo Manufacturing Co., after a fire in a dust collector caused a plant evacuation Monday night.
At 6:29 p.m., the McKean County 911 Center dispatched Bradford Township and Bradford City fire departments to a fire at the plant on Congress Street. At first, it was called in as a trash bin fire, but quickly became apparent the fire was in the dust collection system for the buffing department.
“The dust collector is on the exterior of the building,” Paup explained. “The reason why it originally appeared to be worse, we think, is because so much smoke entered the facility.”
Paup praised the quick response by employees, who followed protocol for evacuating the building, and the others whose job it is to respond to emergency situations like fires.
“All procedures were followed,” he said. “I’m very, very pleased that everyone is safe.”
He said the smoke was cleared from the building within about 90 minutes, and as portions of the building were deemed safe by the fire department, employees were allowed back in to resume work.
“Obviously my first concern is to make sure it is safe before anyone goes back into that facility,” Paup said, adding safety officers made sure the fire department was “totally comfortable before anyone went back in.”
Zippo’s head of operations, safety and manufacturing were at the scene shortly after the call.
“Everyone will be back to work tomorrow,” Paup said. “Operations will be normal.”
While the dust collector was damaged, there are redundancies in place, he added.
“Damage was contained to the exterior dust collector,” he said, noting suppression systems worked exactly as they were supposed to.
“We were assisted by the prompt response of the Bradford Township Fire Department,” Paup said, adding, “they were here within minutes … so quick. They do an amazing job. It really punctuates the importance of having those guys in the community. They did a phenomenal job.”
Referring to the fire itself, Paup said dangers such as there are “somewhat inherent with the buffing process,” but added this incident will be studied to “figure out a corrective action to avoid something like this happening again.”
He said the incident is still under investigation.
Firefighters were still on the scene late Monday night. Bradford Township Fire Chief Dan Burkhouse said the fire was accidental in nature, and there was no structural damage.
He said there were 28 firefighters on the scene. Equipment used included 2½-inch line, two highrise packs, exterior ladders, pressure fans and a thermal imaging camera.
(Era reporters Ruth Bogdan and Nick Richardson contributed to this report.)
