Sept. 04 -- Using power saws and other tools, firefighters on ladders put out a fire behind a steel wall at the Kleen Energy plant in Middletown Tuesday morning, the fire chief said. No one was injured.
A 911 call from the power plant at 1349 River Road came in about 5:20 a.m., a dispatcher said. When firefighters arrived, they called for more help. The fire was out by about 8 a.m., said Michael Howley, chief of the South Fire District.
The fire department called for mutual aid because of the heat and the size of the plant, Howley said. When it’s hot, firefighters rotate firefighting duties to make sure they stay hydrated and don’t overheat.
“So the operation wasn’t really a big operation, it just seemed big,” Howley said.
Firefighters had to use power saws to cut through steel and extinguish the fire, which was burning in hardened insulation about 18 feet in the air, he said. They used an aerial bucket, too, with the operator having to navigate through narrow passages.
About a half-dozen workers were in the plant at the time of the 911 call. Although the flames were hidden inside insulation behind the steel wall high above their heads, employees realized during a routine inspection that there was a fire because the wall was becoming charred, Howley said.
“They were able to see on the steel side of the wall that it was charred, from a gray to a charred black,” he said. The flames never got near gas, as Mayor Dan Drew confirmed before the fire was out.
Representatives of the fire marshal’s office are investigating the cause of the fire along with troopers from the state police Fire and Explosion Investigation Unit.
On Feb. 7, 2010, an explosion at the plant killed six people and injured about 60. The blast happened while a “gas blow” — a procedure to clean debris from pipes — was underway.
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