A fire broke out Friday evening at a recycling center that caused a large amount of smoke that could be seen from miles away as firefighters tried to put out the flames in southeast Fresno.
The 15,000 square feet GAF building — used to recycle mattresses by essentially stripping down the old beds into different components and shipping them off for recycling — caught on fire Friday evening. Calls started coming in around 7 p.m.
The building is located near Muscat and Willow avenues, known as an industrial area.
The recycling company’s slogan is: “Where mattresses go to die.”
“The fuel loading was tremendous,” Fresno County Fire Battalion Chief Ryan Michaels said. “There’s multiple large commercial vehicles within the building that were involved with the fire."
Firefighters still were trying to determine what caused the fire and were working late into the night to put out the flames.
No one was in the building at the time of the blaze with workers having left several hours before, Michaels said.
Due to some structural integrity issues within the building, it forced crews to move outside of the building for firefighter safety.
Michaels said the material inside was very tight and packed, and stacked 15 to 20 feet, creating a difficult blaze to put out.
In addition, some of the mattresses had plastic and wood components, which made the material around the mattress itself to burn down into a petroleum almost based product.
This caused a lot of the dense, black smoke.
To combat the height of the fire, firefighters used tall ladders attached to their fire trucks.
“The fire is about 50 percent contained, but the last 50 is going to be very difficult to do without risking firefighters,” Michaels said.
Fresno City, Fresno County Fire and EMS Personnel were on scene to assist.
There currently is no estimate in damage.
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