ROCKTON, Ill. — The Rockton Fire Protection District says the fire that burned for days at the Chemtool plant was accidental.
Fire Chief Kirk Wilson released the findings of their initial investigation into the fire Friday.
Wilson says a project was underway on the morning of June 14th to replace insulation on an elevated heat transfer piping network at the facility, which was used to manufacture greases and carried heated mineral oil.
Shortly before 7 a.m. that morning, an employee of an outside contractor was working on that insulation using a scissor lift when an unknown amount of mineral oil was released from the piping. The oil fell to the floor and started pooling.
The fire department says Chemtool operators quickly detected the oil release and shut down the boiler. They were in the process of placing containment booms and de-pressuring the heat transfer piping network when the fire started.
At this time, fire officials believe the scissor lift may have accidentally hit a valve or another piece of the piping with enough force to cause the oil to spill out of the piping. They have not yet been able to determine what sparked the fire.
The flames quickly spread to the rest of the plant, which housed thousands of gallons of oil and grease. The initial cloud of smoke could be seen as far away as Edgerton in Wisconsin, with the plume also showing up on weather radar systems.
An industrial firefighting team was called in from Louisana to help control the chemical fire, and tried to take as many precautions as possible to protect the environment from the fire-suppressing foam they used, including digging trenches around the plant and placing booms in the river. The EPA was on site monitoring air quality for several days as the fire burned.
The village says the fire was finally put out on Wednesday, about 10 days after it started.
People living within a mile of the plant were kept out of their homes for nearly a week until health officials determined it was safe to return. A group of those residents have filed a class-action lawsuit in response to the fire.
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