SALISBURY -- A fire at the Maxum Yachts boatbuilding shop on Naylor Mill Road Wednesday morning sent three firefighters who were battling the blaze to the hospital with burns to their faces and hands.
The Salisbury Fire Department responded to a fire alarm that went off at the company at 9:17 a.m., Fire Chief David See said at the scene. The fire originated in a waste hopper on the east side of a warehouse building that was packed with sawdust, See said.
The firefighters were injured when flames shot out of the building as they were gaining access to it, See said. A fireball could be seen shooting from the structure at about 9:30 a.m., briefly engulfing a firefighter who was on an elevated platform. A second firefighter on the platform could be seen standing just outside the flames.
See later described the blaze as a "dust explosion or a flash fire."
The fire department did not identify the firefighters who had been injured. People familiar with the fire scene identified them as Chris O'Barsky, Zack Bridges and Richard Rathel, a lieutenant.
A Peninsula Regional Medical Center spokesman said that O'Barsky and Bridges had been treated at the hospital and released Wednesday. The spokesman said Rathel had been treated and transferred to another medical facility.
At an afternoon press conference, fire officials said the one firefighter who had not been discharged had been taken to a burn center in Baltimore. An operator at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center said Rathel was being treated there in its burn unit.
State fire marshals have already begun investigating the cause of the fire, which See said Wednesday had not been determined. A Maxum Yachts employee standing outside the building said he believed wood chips, a byproduct of the construction process, had been sucked up by ventilation ducts and had been smoldering before the fire alarm went off.
See said he did not know of any employees who had been injured in the fire, which he said had been largely extinguished by 10:30 a.m. Fire trucks remained on the scene all morning.
On Dec. 8, 2004, a fire in the same building was caused by sawdust in the ventilation system that reacted with a spark from a wood saw. That fire caused no injuries and led to $30,000 in damages.
See said the fire department responds "rather frequently" to activations of the building's automatic fire alarm system.
"We have been here before for the same event," See said. "It seems like this is becoming a frequent event." He said relatively new versions of fire safety equipment, acquired within the last two years, had proved essential in keeping many firefighters safe Wednesday.
At the afternoon press conference, Salisbury Mayor Barrie Parsons Tilghman praised the fire department for its quick response to the fire, as well as its work at an explosion last week at Perdue Farms' Salisbury processing plant when two chemicals, accidentally mixed together, exploded. The two incidents emphasized the importance of the department's continual training for emergencies, Tilghman said.
Deputy Fire Chief Bill Gordy said crews responded to a second automatic fire alarm at Maxum Yachts on Wednesday afternoon and extinguished a small amount of combustible material in the waste bin without incident or injury.
The boatbuilding factory was planning to open for business as usual this morning, a representative who answered the phone there Wednesday afternoon said. The company is one of Salisbury's largest manufacturers and biggest employers.
