Partners in Prevention

May/June 2015

Fire safety professionals can help you shape your fire prevention
and response plans, while you can help them understand the unique materials, hazards, or circumstances they might face when responding to a fire at your facility. 

By Katie Pyzyk

The image is the stuff of nightmares: billowing smoke visible from miles away, as raging flames eat away at scrapyard materials and race toward the yard’s equipment and structures. At its worst, a major scrap facility fire can result in injury or death. Short of that, it can cause the loss of scrap material, structures, and money. Even minor fires that create substantial smoke can be a public relations disaster. But it doesn’t have to be that way. A solid fire prevention and response plan can stop a small spark from growing into an uncontrollable blaze. And who better to help craft it than those who prevent and battle fires for a living?

Facing Little-Known Truths

A rarely uttered truth of the scrap industry is that fires are not just probable but inevitable, says John Gilstrap, ISRI’s former director of safety. And here’s a rarely uttered truth of the firefighting profession: When a fire breaks out, the responders’ mission “is not necessarily to put out your fire; [their] mission is to limit the scope of the emergency,” he says. As a former fire command officer, Gilstrap knows firsthand that responders primarily want to keep people safe and stop the fire from spreading. The damage to your buildings, equipment, or scrap material is a lesser concern. That’s why he advocates prevention and response plans that keep fires as small as possible.

Here’s one more rarely uttered truth: Most fire safety professionals will jump at the chance to work with you on safety plans and training. The public typically only deals with them during an emergency, but firefighters constantly provide outreach and education, Gilstrap says.

When you ask these first responders to visit your facilities, the interaction can be mutually beneficial: You learn where you can make fire safety improvements to your yard, and the firefighters learn about the facility, its potential hazards, and other obstacles they might face when responding to a fire there. “The more information they have up front, the better they’re going to be,” Gilstrap says. It takes the guesswork out of their job in a number of ways, such as trying to determine your water supply. “Scrap business owners should reach out to the fire and rescue service and say, ‘OK, here’s my facility. What do you need … to most effectively fight an emergency?’”

That idea of mutual benefit prompted Lisa Dunn to reach out to firefighters when she joined Becker Iron & Metal (Venice, Ill.) as quality, environmental, health, and safety director a couple of years ago. “I want them to be familiar with the lay of the land in case something would happen, and I wanted to get any tips or advice,” she says, because “you know, they’re the experts.”

One of the first things those experts spotted at Becker Iron & Metal’s relatively new facility was that first responders would have to cut through a fence to access the fire hydrant that was next to the property, Dunn says. So the company installed a gate there, as well as a lockbox to which firefighters and police have a key, giving them quick access to the facility after hours. Dunn found the visit so valuable that she plans on “doing it yearly if their time [allows] for it. I made sure to let them know we really appreciated them and knew their time was valuable.”

Jerry Heitman, safety manager and environmental health coordinator at Sadoff Iron & Metal Co. (Fond du Lac, Wis.), also invited first responders to visit his facility and found the meeting beneficial. Of concern to them were the potentially dangerous products on site, such as hydraulic fluid, propane, automotive batteries, and aluminum dross. The latter could cause exponential flame growth, he says. Giving firefighters a tour “went a long way as far as getting them acclimated to our facility … instead of just being ‘that scrapyard down the road,’” Heitman says. One simple fix the first responders suggested: Install a “hazard” sign on the outside of an aluminum dross storage building.

Sadoff Iron & Metal allotted three days for multiple battalion visits, which allowed as many responders as possible to participate. That’s a good policy, Gilstrap says, because fire stations need someone on call 24 hours a day, and first responders often rotate on different shifts throughout the month. “Having one guy in charge the night you [have] an emergency, and he’s the guy who didn’t attend the orientation, it’s going to be problematic,” Gilstrap says. Ensuring that all the crews receive the orientation is key.

Developing a Fire Plan

When fire professionals visit a scrap facility, they also can check the company’s fire response plan and offer tips. “People hesitate to plan for [fires] because it’s the thing they don’t want to talk about. They don’t want to think about it. So it’s an easy thing to put off for tomorrow. But it really needs to be right at the top of the list,” Gilstrap says. “If you knew that you were going to have a fire next Thursday, wouldn’t you spend every day preparing for it, so you’re ready for it?”

Ben Johnson, director of operations at Texas Recycling/Surplus (Dallas), considers fire prevention and response an important enough topic to touch on it at nearly all of his monthly safety meetings. “If you don’t, you get complacent. We’re all human,” he says. “The more you talk about it and the more you go over it, the more people are going to remember exactly what their role is when that time comes” to implement the response plan.

In fact, his employees proved that repetition pays off when they faced a small fire in March. “[The owners] weren’t that excited, obviously, because they were seeing dollar signs flying out the window with the fire trucks out there. But I was running around saying, ‘Oh my God, everybody did exactly what they were supposed to!’”

To train the company’s employees, Johnson enlisted the help of Dallas Fire and Rescue, which visited the facility and demonstrated how to use fire extinguishers properly. The hands-on presentation had every employee—even office workers—going outside to use a fire extinguisher on a controlled fire. When the March fire broke out and the company’s emergency plan went into play, it “worked flawlessly,” Johnson says. All knew their role, and all employees evacuated and made it to the designated safe area. “The employees that were using fire extinguishers, it was like second nature to them,” he recalls. The plan worked so well, the fire department commended the Texas Recycling/Surplus management and employees.

Professional assistance with fire extinguisher training is “the most frequent educational request that we get,” says Travis County (Texas) Fire Marshal Hershel Lee. “Having a [staff] person knowledgeable in the use of fire extinguishers while the fire is very small is of great value,” he says. This training is especially relevant to scrap businesses because they might require special types of fire extinguishers, such as Class D extinguishers that contain a dry powder for fighting metal fires.

Practice really does make perfect when it comes to emergency plans. Because people are such creatures of habit, trained workers can go on autopilot in a stressful situation and do what they are supposed to do. “When an emergency is ongoing, the learning curve is really, really steep, and the time to learn is very short. In the absence of training, that’s where panic is born,” Gilstrap says. “But if you have a plan, then you can push the fear off to the side and save yourself.” Not instituting and practicing a plan, on the other hand, can be disastrous. “If you don’t have that plan, then people do the weirdest things,” he says. “They freeze, they go the wrong way, they do the wrong thing. They think they’re supposed to do something the boss really had no intention for them to do, or they’re not aware they’re supposed to do something the boss has been expecting them to do.” Working with fire professionals on the plan can help fill in any gaps that may exist.

The most successful fire prevention plans involve buy-in from all levels. Safety is not a spectator sport, so to speak. Every employee should play a role in prevention and response, safety managers suggest. Actively participating in a practice fire-response exercise solidifies the information in a person’s mind far better than merely listening to information. “Make the employees involved and hands-on because most people do not pay great attention when they’re standing there just reading a policy,” Dunn says. “Show them true examples of the right way and the wrong way [to do something] so there can’t be any misconstruing of anything.”

Another useful strategy, according to Johnson, is to divide fire response responsibilities—such as evacuating employees, turning off machinery, and performing head counts—among the staff. This prevents any one person from becoming overwhelmed, and it makes every person responsible for a part of the whole team’s success. This is also true for everyday fire prevention duties: Just like safety is everyone’s responsibility, so, too, is fire prevention.

The Risks of Poor Housekeeping

Scrapyards must consider fire hazards that other businesses don’t face. Friction can create sparks in equipment or material being processed. Processors also need to be on the lookout for flammable materials such as magnesium that, once they catch fire, must be extinguished with a product besides water. Magnesium reacts with water at room temperature, and an explosion could occur if the two come in contact.

Many scrap facilities—especially tire and paper processors—must be particularly vigilant about eliminating combustible dust. One spark can cause a dust explosion or allow rapid fire spread, so it’s crucial to avoid dust buildup in the first place. “Housekeeping is very important. We can’t stress that enough,” Johnson says.

Regular housekeeping is perhaps the most important fire-prevention measure scrapyards should undertake. Safety managers say keeping scrapyards clean can make all the difference between controlling a fire and losing an entire business. For companies with strong fire prevention plans, that typically means cleaning thoroughly at least once daily, if not more often.

“We have two groundsmen at the shredder during daytime operation when it’s running,” Heitman says. “In addition to checking for fluff accumulation and checking for hot spots, they’re going around and cleaning. We really try to keep [down] any kind of dust accumulation and debris accumulation—which, again, would help propagate a fire. We’re trying to clean for that anytime we can throughout the day.”

Fire professionals agree that the time devoted to cleaning and performing regular maintenance is well spent. Poor housekeeping in a facility “either causes a fire to occur or allows a fire to progress more rapidly,” Lee says.

Because of all the machinery scrap processing requires, friction is a significant concern, but it, too, can be controlled through regular maintenance. “A well-oiled bearing doesn’t generate heat at all; a poorly oiled bearing generates nothing but heat. High dust creates a much larger fire hazard. Get rid of the dust, and you don’t have the dust hazard,” Gilstrap says.

Cleaning and maintenance go hand in hand to reduce the risk of friction-based fires. “The balers—especially during the summertime—the rams on those and the motors are creating lots of heat. If we didn’t clean those off like we do every day, that could be a potential fire hazard,” Johnson says.

Cleaning and maintenance are “huge,” Dunn says. Other than the obvious measures of banning smoking and keeping flames away from compressed gases, workers are constantly “trying to keep our scrap piles segregated so that if something happens, you’re only dealing with one pile instead of the whole 15 acres,” she says.

Employees also must constantly search for rogue materials that might have slipped into an incoming load of scrap. Although some businesses do not accept items like magnesium turnings due to the metal’s combustibility, some enter the scrap stream accidentally or customers intentionally try to sneak them in. Alert employees can remove offending materials before they have a chance to ignite, says Felipe Guerra, environmental, health, and safety manager at Sierra Recycling & Demolition (Bakersfield, Calif.). “Especially if somebody is trying to get rid of something that might be illegal or harmful, they’ll try to hide it. They will try to do anything they can to dispose of their waste. That’s one of the things we train all the staff in,” he says.

Awareness is a seemingly obvious safety measure that often gets forgotten. “This is a big industry where every­body has to be on their toes, everybody has to be paying attention,” Guerra says. “This is a dangerous industry if you don’t pay attention.” Employees need to remember that their attention and actions affect co-workers, and, ultimately, the entire business. “They’re responsible for their own safety and the safety of co-workers,” Guerra says. “It’s just like driving a car. If I’m not thinking about my driving and I’m thinking about my personal problems, I can get myself killed or kill somebody [else].”

Timing Is Everything

Time really is of the essence during a fire emergency. Still, first responders say, people typically waste a lot of time during an emergency by making the wrong decisions, such as failing to call 911 right away before trying to fight the fire. Timing is even more crucial in a potentially hazard-rich environment like a scrapyard. “A lot of times, you get a little fire that starts, and people waste a lot of time getting extinguishers and trying to put the fire out; it doesn’t work, and the fire gets bigger,” Gilstrap says. “A small fire becomes a big fire with startling speed. The very first step is to call 911.”

Sure, requesting first responders when it ends up being unnecessary can be embarrassing. But it would be far more embarrassing to lose an entire facility because you waited too long to call for help. “If it’s not a big deal, just call them back and say, ‘We don’t need you,’” Gilstrap says. If you already have a relationship with the first responders, they’ll know it was a matter of trying to do the right thing, not crying wolf.

No matter how satisfactory a scrap business’s fire safety plan may seem, it almost certainly could be improved by letting a fire marshal or firefighter take a look. “Even I can miss some things,” Johnson says. “It’s always good to keep a relationship in the community with your local fire department. They’re always there .… They’re just really helpful.”

As Heitman puts it, firefighters “would rather come on a nonemergency basis than have to come in full rescue mode.”

Katie Pyzyk is a Scrap contributing writer.