A fire broke out at 1.45 am on a turbine generator that had been restarted the day before. As soon as the fire had been detected, the boiler room driver, assisted by 2 people, attempted to extinguish the fire and switch over the installations to safety mode (emergency shutdown of the boiler room: cutoff of the gas supply). Gas and electricity utilities cut off the site’s supplies. Equipped with SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) and despite water supply difficulties, firefighters used 3 nozzles, one of which was mounted on a swivelling ladder. They brought the fire under control at 3.30 am and made an assessment of the situation using a thermal imaging camera. The fire had been contained in the area where the two turbine generators were located and in an electrical room. The operator installed a continuous site monitoring system.

During the firefighting, the electricity was cut off in a section of the town of Cagny. The turbine generator, electrical cables and other similar equipment were destroyed. Considering the long wait times for supplying or repairing this equipment, the 2006/2007 sugar beet harvest would no doubt be processed without the turbine generator. The electricity required would therefore need to be purchased from a supplier.

During that period, the sugar refinery carried out a mini-syrup production run corresponding to one month of treatment of the syrups that could not be worked during the end-of-year sugar production. The accident occurred when restarting the equipment, before introducing the syrup into the production systems. This accident was caused by an oil leak that became airborne on contact with a water pipe heated to over 300°C. A pressure gauge had not been installed on a lubrication pump, but rather next to the installation. The operator checked the instrumentation and sensors one by one before putting the installation back in operation.