Santa Clara firefighters battled a tricky four-alarm blaze in the duct work of a paper-recycling plant this morning, according to a fire department spokesman.
The fire was located at the Jefferson Smurfit Corp., 2500 De La Cruz Blvd., across the street from the north end of the Mineta San Jose International Airport.
Santa Clara fire spokesman Dave Parker said investigators hadn't determined what caused the fire to start at the plant, which manufactures folded cartons from recycled paper.
At 8:42 a.m., a worker at the plant pulled a manual alarm hot-wired to the city's fire dispatch center, Parker said. By 9:15 a.m., the blaze had escalated to a four-alarm mutual aid incident involving about 80 firefighters. Several San Jose fire rigs were on the scene.
They confined the fire to some 3-foot diameter ducts above and below the roof that carry off the highly flammable airborne paper fibers and dust that are often produced during the recycling process, Parker said. The ventilation system was shut off to slow the spread of the fire, but there was no way to starve the fire of oxygen because the huge ventilation system cannot be made airtight.
There are no inspection portals in the ducts, Parker said, so firefighters had cut holes in the ducts at various intervals to see how far the fire had spread, and then spray water in to put it out.
``That makes it difficult to get at the fire, because you can't see it,'' he said. ``The challenge is to get ahead of it and stop it.''
More than two dozen fire engines and other vehicles, including some from the San Jose Fire Department, were at the scene. Parker said crews would stay there even after the fire is out to guard against any possible flare-up.
No injuries to workers or firefighters were reported.
Outside, in a parking lot in front of the sprawling white building, Jefferson Smurfit workers wearing hard hats lounged and chatted in groups.
Behind a tall fence, hundreds of huge bales of recycled paper waited their turn to be transformed inside the building, along with tall stacks of wooden pallets. At times, bales like these have caught fire in the past at the plant, Parker said, creating blazes that took several days to extinguish.
Rich Dressler, a spokesman for the airport, said the blaze sent dark smoke 800 feet into the morning sky.
``There was some thick smoke from the worst of the fire, but fortunately it's not a windy day, so the plume when straight up and had no effect on the airport,'' Dressler said.
