National Team To Help Investigate Fire: Documents Still Smoldering From Wednesday’s Warehouse Fire

Posted on Jun 26, 2010 in Records Management News

National Team To Help Inves­ti­gate Fire:

Doc­u­ments Still Smol­der­ing From Wednesday’s Ware­house Fire

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. –

A team from the U.S. Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sions is com­ing this week­end to help fire­fight­ers fig­ure out exactly what caused Wednesday’s struc­ture fire at Broad­way Boule­vard and Rose­mont Avenue.
Offi­cials said the mas­sive fire started at about 8 p.m.Wednesday. No one was inside at the time and no injuries were reported. The fire was fueled by pal­lets of papers and boxes stacked at a busi­ness records stor­age facil­ity, offi­cials said. Fire­fight­ers Thurs­day had con­fined the blaze to the stor­age busi­ness, TMM Busi­ness Records Stor­age.
The company’s web­site claims it is a 40,000 square-foot facil­ity used to store hard copies of doc­u­ments and media. The com­pany indi­cates it scans and backs up every­thing on site. It also touts a reg­u­larly tested dis­as­ter recov­ery plan.
Fire inves­ti­ga­tors were able to enter the build­ing Fri­day and dis­cov­ered one huge pile of doc­u­ments still smol­der­ing.
“If you can imag­ine a 20– or 30-ton trash pile fire, it’s going to take some time for that to burn through,” said Albu­querque Fire Depart­ment Chief James Breen.
Many doc­u­ments are located on 13-foot high stor­age racks. The racks are now full of water and could col­lapse, putting fire­fight­ers’ lives at risk.
“Sev­eral tons of wet prod­ucts — they exceeded the weight-bearing capac­ity of the racks,” said Breen.
Breen said Wednesday’s fire was one of the largest he has seen.

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“It’s not often that the Albu­querque Fire Depart­ment responds to a third-alarm fire,” Breen said. “I’ve been in about 20 years, and I can only think of one other instance where that has occured.“
Now, a BATFE national response team is on its way to help.
“It’s such a large struc­ture, with a high fire load inside the struc­ture, that we’re call­ing in a national resource at no cost to the city to assist us in deter­min­ing the cause and ori­gin of that fire,” said Breen.
Breen said the fire started on the south end of the build­ing and was so intense, the fire sup­pres­sion sys­tem inside the 50-year-old build­ing wasn’t strong enough to put the flames out. Breen said the fire mar­shal is now check­ing into that system.

http://www.koat.com/news/24046306/detail.html

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