A fire broke out on a Sunday morning inside a booth in the reception area of a lead foundry; the blaze started at the surface of a 3,000-ton mound of batteries intended to be recycled. Since the company was not open for business on weekends, the guardian of the neighbouring company actually notified the fire department. With no manager onsite, the rescue teams were required to force open the site (which naturally triggered the anti-intrusion alarm, which in turn alerted the operator) and drill through first the upper siding in back of the building, then the partition separating the crushing and receiving zones. Fire-fighters contained the fire, which remained small in magnitude, and did not detect any release of chlorine vapours or any abnormal pH value in the extinction water stored within the site’s sedimentation basin. The batteries were controlled (for foreign bodies, water quantities) upon reception and then broken in order to drain them of their acid and unload their contents. According to the operator, the fire only broke out on the surface and would not have been generated by the batteries themselves, but rather by a lightning bolt strike at night. The batteries had been stored for several days prior to the fire. Notified by the operator on the day of the accident, the Hazardous Installations inspector made a site visit on the morning of the next day and requested that the operator submit a detailed report of the accident accompanied by a set of anticipated preventive and corrective actions, the most recent “lightning” study and an evaluation by an independent laboratory of the impact from smoke released into the atmosphere at the time of the incident. Regional authorities with the DRIRE Agency made the following observations: along the site enclosure, equipment lying on the ground blocked the beam of the anti-intrusion cells; battery collectors stored outside the building could have impeded the smooth arrival of rescue teams into the premises; the mound of batteries exceeded in some spots the reception building wall height and were leaning on the building siding, making it weaker; and the retention basin volume associated with the H2SO4 tank was insufficient. The operator installed flame and smoke detectors in the reception area that may be activated outside of business hours and relayed to an on-call staff member or a security company.