Eight firefighters were recovering Tuesday after they were hospitalized after fighting a fire in Portsmouth.
Officials said the blaze broke out inside the Schiller Station power plant at about 8:30 a.m. Three of the firefighters suffered first- and second-degree steam burns, and the others were treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration.
A Public Service Co. of New Hampshire employee reported the fire after smelling smoke in an area called the bag house.
"The fire is in what's called the bag house," Deputy Chief Steven Griswold said. "The bag house takes the ash from the combustion process and scrubs it out of the air so it doesn't get distributed into the atmosphere."
The bag house was not operating at the time the fire broke out. The plant has been testing the building since Saturday as the facility moves toward burning wood instead of coal.
The boiler next to the bag house was on, and that was a challenge for firefighters to deal with, officials said.
"We probably have about 500-degree coal ash at the bottom of the tanks," Chief Christopher Leclaire said. "You hit that with water and you get steam conversion -- very, very hot."
Initially, 14 Portsmouth firefighters responded to the call, but the heat inside the bag house forced them to call for backup.
"The second alarm was just for manpower," Griswold said. "Obviously, in this kind of heat, we go through a lot of people. We're wearing them out pretty quick."
Crews from at least five surrounding towns were called in to help. The fire was contained by 9:40 a.m., but Leclaire said crews will watch the area to make sure there are no more problems.
Fire officials said a couple of the firefighters were still being treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration on Monday evening, but they should be released soon. The others, including the three who were burned, were all treated and released.
The cause of the fire remained under investigation.
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