A total of six fire engines from three fire stations attended the blaze at Van Dalen UK's yard at 6:25pm and left the scene at one o'c;lock the following day after damping down the scene. A spokeswoman for Cleveland County Fire Brigade said: “We sent 20 people to the incident including three appliances from Hartlepool fire station, one from Headlands and two from Billingham. We also used a hydraulic platform and water relayed from the sea to damp down the scene.”
Burning rubber on the steel wire left over from tyre shredding operations produced black smoke from the fire so local residents were advised to shut their windows.
Ian Beat, financial director at Van Dalen UK, told letsrecycle.com that the tyre wire “spontaneously combusted” when heat built up in the heap.
“We did not know at first that this material is liable to spontaneous combustion,” he said. “If your pile is as big as ours it gets too hot – because the rubber is an insulating material – and you have to spread it out for it to dry because it is the moisture in there that causes the fire.”
Mr Beat said that up to around 1,000 tonnes of the material is stored on the Hartlepool site as it is bulked up. The steel wire from tyre producers and some scrap merchants had been intended for export to be melted down and remade into new steel products.
The Dutch company has now said it will no longer take this steel material from tyre shredders and granulators because of the fire risk involved. “We may get it in mixed loads but we won't consciously be looking to buy it in bulk,” said Mr Beat.
Mr Beat said Environment Agency officers were on hand during the fire to advise on potential pollution hazards and clearing up. “We are now dealing with it and we have got the environment people working with us,” he said. “We are striving to make sure this doesn't happen again.”
Register for free to comment