On The Job - Georgia: Fire Destroys Massive LaGrange Carpet Mill

LaGrange FIRE DEPARTMENT
Chief Chris A. Smith
Personnel: 64 career firefighters
Apparatus: Five pumpers, one aerial, one rescue, one command vehicle, six staff vehicles
Population: 28,000
Area: 16 square miles

"Big, black and hot!" Those are the words used by LaGrange, GA, Fire Chief Chris A. Smith to describe the fire in a Milliken & Co. carpet mill on Jan. 31, 1995, that became one of the largest "dollar loss" incidents in Georgia history reportedly in excess of $200 million.

LaGrange is a midsize industrial city in west-central Georgia, two hours southwest of Atlanta. Fire protection is provided by the fully paid LaGrange Fire Department (LFD), which operates three stations. Seventeen firefighters are on duty per shift.

Photo by Brooks Shows The 585,000-square-foot facility suffered a multimillion-dollar loss. Mutual aid from fire departments in Georgia and Alabama responded to the scene.

At 2:03 P.M. on Tuesday, Jan. 31, the LFD's station radio announced a fire at Milliken's Live Oak Mill, a 580,000-square-foot carpet manufacturing plant about two miles from Station 1 (Fire Headquarters). Engines 4, 5 and 2, Truck 11 and Deputy Chief of Suppression Johnny Morris (Car 810) responded.

Just as they left the station, a huge column of thick, black smoke could be seen towering well into the sky in the direction of the mill indicating that this was not going to be just an "alarm bell ringing" run. Lieutenants Steve Hashimoto (Car 805) and Keith Dunlap (Car 806) also responded. At 2:07, Engine 3 was called to a propane tank leak, reducing the availability of department resources.

The Live Oak Mill was in a one-story, 585-foot-by-885-foot rectangular building with a roof deck about 30 feet high. Exposure 1 is West Lukken Industrial Drive. Exposure 2 is an open area for truck storage and loading docks, leading to a small stream. Exposure 3 is Swift Street, along the rear of the plant. (There is an elevation difference of 22 feet from the floor level up to Swift Street. This equals about two stories, so that someone standing on Swift Street could see across the roof of the mill. This became an important factor in the investigation of the fire.) Exposure 4 is open land with some latex and other support tanks as well as small auxiliary buildings. Access to all sides of the plant was not a major problem with the exception of the length of the 40-foot-plus trailers backed into the loading docks along Exposure 2.

The LFD is dispatched by the police department radio room. When this fire report came in, both fire and police were simultaneously given the call. Police Officer W.T. Baker, who had been conducting radar traffic monitoring, was in a cruiser equipped with a video camera. Seeing the huge column of smoke, he immediately headed for the plant. Baker left his camera running as he responded. He parked his vehicle on Swift Street with the camera pointed at the burning end of the plant. The tape from his cruiser recorded fire through the roof in an area estimated to be 100 by 100 feet upon his arrival. Fire was through the roof near the sides 3 and 4 corner of the building.

At 2:05 P.M., LaGrange 911 communications advised Morris and all responding companies that Milliken security had begun evacuating the plant. The crew of Engine 4, under the command of Lieutenant Charlie Potts, arrived at 2:08 and entered the plant compound through the main gate on West Lukken Industrial Drive. The crew told Morris they had a heavy flame front extending through the roof near the sides 3 and 4 corner. Engine 4 traveled along the east side (side 4) of the building, caught a yard hydrant and dropped lines for an interior attack through personnel doors.

Photo by Brooks Shows Upon arrival, fire was venting through a 100-by-100-foot area of the roof. The nearly 30-foot-high roof collapsed rapidly.

Milliken employees reported that a maintenance man was trapped on the roof, where he had been sent to see whether the fire had extended from the inside. It had, and was growing rapidly. He had come up through a roof hatch, but soon the flames extended so close to the hatch that he could not go back down that way. To escape the flames from the rapidly enlarging hole in the roof, the worker had gone completely across the roof to the corner of sides 1 and 2 to await rescue. LaGrange's only aerial company, Ladder 11, under the command of Lieutenant Woodland Hamilton, was told of the worker's situation. It immediately diverted to that corner and made the rescue.

Engine 5 and Car 810 arrived on the Swift Street side, having been told by Engine 4 that the fire was near the rear of the plant. Morris told LaGrange 911 to notify the power company because there was "sparking everywhere" due to the rapidly collapsing roof. The City of LaGrange operates an electrical department for power distribution throughout most of the city. The Milliken plant, however, was tied directly to the Georgia Power Co. system, so the city electrical department could not turn off electrical service to the plant.

With the bulk of the fire along side 4, Morris moved the command post there at 2:13 P.M. While the engine companies began stretching lines to prepare to enter the building, Milliken personnel were advising the chiefs at the command post about the area inside the huge carpet mill that was on fire and providing details on what had happened.

The initial size-up showed a catastrophic fire rapidly developing. At 2:14 P.M., mutual aid was requested from the Troup County Fire Department, whose coverage area surrounds LaGrange, and from the City of West Point, 16 miles away. Off-duty LaGrange firefighters and chief officers, quickly becoming aware of the huge fire, voluntarily reported to their stations. The two off-duty battalion commanders were ordered to the scene for sector assignments. The radio room reported that Engine 1 was available with off-duty personnel and it was dispatched to the scene at 2:20, only 17 minutes after the initial alarm. Meanwhile, Engine 3 had completed its assignment at the propane leak and also was enroute to the mill.

All indications are that there was a delay in calling the LFD to the scene. The department's public information officer, Beverley Dowis, responded immediately when the huge volume of smoke could be seen as the apparatus left Station 1. She recalled that most of the employees were out of the plant and "within five or less minutes of my arrival at the command post about 1410 (2:10 P.M.), Milliken officials notified us that all employees were out and accounted for." Considering that about 250 workers were in the plant when the fire broke out, this helps confirm that the call to the LFD was delayed.

The Fire's Path

Several additions had been made to the Live Oak Mill since the original section of the plant was built in the early 1960s. What was a warehouse on the day of the fire originally had been the manufacturing area. Manufacturing had been moved to the latest addition, an L-shaped area that extended the length of the rear of the plant and then turned and ran along side 4. This arrangement let the fire spread in two directions from its origin near the corner of sides 3 and 4. Fire was moving south along the side 4 wall and west along the side 3 wall.

Milliken later determined that the fire originated with an oil leak in a machine used to adhere latex backing to tufted carpet. The adhering process uses a heat-transfer system in which oil is heated and then pumped through the machine. This is a flammable Thermoil with a flash point in the 350 degrees Fahrenheit range. Three machines were fed by a roof-mounted, 3,000-gallon oil tank; the heating unit was natural gas fired. Because the plant was destroyed, however, it was impossible to pinpoint what caused the initial oil leak that ignited and rapidly spread the fire.

There was speculation that a rotary coupling may have failed or begun to severely leak. Carpet is moved across large heated drums that are set in a serpentine arrangement. As the carpet moves, it is dried and the latex is set to it. A rotary coupling is provided on each end of the drum in the axle; this way oil can be pumped through the drum. When higher temperatures and less moisture are needed, oil heat transfer systems are used. Because the oil is heated, it is much closer to its flash point, so once the "atomized" oil began spraying out, ignition was almost immediate. Lines feeding these heating drums were reported to be armored and designed for the heat and the pressures involved. It could not be determined whether a hose burned through.

Employees working in the area at the time said oil was running out onto the floor and igniting, and that fire was spreading rapidly as they fled. In addition, the venting system over the machines was pulling the flames up and through the roof. The flames quickly exposed the class II steel deck roof to enough heat to set it on fire.

Firefighters Driven Back

An interior attack was made from side 4 using two 1 3/4-inch handlines and one 2 1/2-inch line, but Smith recalled that these had little impact on the flames in that area. Firefighters were driven back out of the building within moments of entering. It was obvious a master stream attack was going to be needed, so Smith asked to have the water pressure increased in the area at 2:24 P.M.

At 2:29, additional mutual aid was requested. Engines from Greenville, GA, and Roanoke, AL, as well as a truck company from the Coweta County Fire Department in Newnan, GA, were soon enroute. By 2:41, Meriweather County, GA, had dispatched tankers and pumpers and Carrollton, GA, sent a ladder truck.

The command post was again moved to side 1, on the Lukken Industrial side of the building, to provide a better view of the rapidly deteriorating situation. Command knew that the only hope was to make a stand at the interior fire walls. These reportedly were all equipped with fire doors, except some conveyor openings that were protected by water curtains.

When the L-shaped addition was built, the sprinkler risers, which had originally been fed from the rear of the plant, had to be relocated to get the fire mains out from beneath the floor of the addition. The risers were moved to the "new" exterior wall and large feed mains were routed across the new building at the roof level. The bulk of the fire was in this L-shaped addition, and as the roof collapsed it pulled down the bulk mains, rendering the sprinklers throughout the remainder of the plant useless. This then made the water spray protection systems on the conveyor openings useless and let fire easily penetrate that fire wall.

The fire walls originally had been exterior walls and apparently were never designed to be a "maximum foreseeable loss" (MFL) rated fire walls. They were not provided with a parapet and, other than expansion joists, reportedly did not extend above the roof deck to any great degree. Early in the operation, an investigation team entered the plant and manually closed two fire doors that had failed to shut automatically. Others did close automatically as designed. The reconnaissance team also told back that big water was going to have to be taken into the building and several master stream deluge guns set up along the two angles of this wall to prevent the fire from passing this point. It was going to be a massive job with only a small chance of success now that there was no sprinkler protection assisting the firefighters on either side of these walls.

Photo by Brooks Shows The entire slab was cleared in 19 days. With crews working around the clock, the facility was rebuilt and back in business in six months.

West Point Chief Kris Cagle was put in charge of the interior attack teams. Cagle reported that visibility inside the mill was not a problem due to the massive hole in the roof and the thermal column sucking in vast amounts of fresh air from all openings in the unburned sections of the mill. Almost all of the smoke was being sucked out of the inside of the plant.

The interior firefighting teams entered from side 1 and proceeded across the building with their lines. They hand-pulled in a 2 1/2-inch attack line and two three-inch supply lines for deluge guns. These crews dragged these lines over 800 feet across the huge plant. The initial interior attack plan was to try and cut off the fire's westward movement down side 3 in the leg of the L-shaped addition (see diagram on page 84). The interior crews assigned personnel to constantly monitor fire movement to prevent this eight-member team from being cut off. In addition to this interior monitoring, Cagle was in frequent contact with Captain Steve Preston of the Troup County Fire Department, who was the safety officer and observing the situation from the exterior of the building.

Cagle said his biggest problem was that the interior walls had "too many openings and not enough time and manpower to get adequate water supplies stretched into the interior to thoroughly protect all openings in the walls." As the fire neared the wall east of their position, which separated the interior teams from the main area involved, Cagle began to withdraw them to the south and toward the wall on side 1.

After the firefighters had worked their lines through the openings on this east wall for about 30 minutes, vapors that had built up along the north wails adjacent to the leg of the L addition ignited. Cagle could hear sprinkler heads popping but no water was flowing due to the broken bulk feed mains. At this point, the smoke began quickly banking down and the interior heat level rose rapidly. It was time to abandon all interior operations.

Cagle said that although the safety officer's accounting showed they had operated inside for one hour and 15 minutes, "without a huge quantity of manpower with massive amounts of hoses and enough appliances for all doorways, there was no way our small crew was going to stop this fire."

The interior attack teams rapidly moved to abandon their position. Within about 10 minutes, fire boiled out the door which they had exited. At this point, the plant was totally involved in fire and all hope of saving any of the plant was lost. During the height of the fire, it is estimated that firefighters were flowing 4,500 to 5,000 gpm into the building.

With the hope of saving any section of the plant gone, mutual aid companies were told to "take up" return to their jurisdictions or cover the vacant LaGrange stations.

The thick smoke forced some residential areas to be evacuated for several hours until the fire began to die down. There were no civilian injuries and no major firefighter injuries during the incident.

The rapid retreat by Cagle's interior firefighters forced them to abandon their hoselines. Equipment lost included almost 900 feet of 21/2-inch hose, a monitor nozzle, two 21/2-inch attack nozzles and assorted other pieces of equipment.

Demolition and reconstruction started almost before the shattered plant's steel was cool. The entire slab was cleared in 19 days. Over 3,000 construction workers from 11 states put in 84 hours per week to build a new, 700,000-square-foot plant.

Their efforts paid off and they beat the "goal to be back in business in six months" by 16 minutes. The first pieces of carpet tile came off the new production line at 11:44 P.M. on July 31, 1995. The rebuilding project was described as the "fastest construction of a major industrial plant since the massive factory building of World War II." Normally, construction of a plant of this type and size takes two years.