In the egg processing plant, a fire broke out inside an electrical control box present in a utility room integrated into the production premises and then spread within the building over 200 m² of floor space. The blaze was detected at 5:45 am by an employee (due to the presence of smoke), but according to the abnormal temperature rise measured in the facility’s cold storage room, the outbreak would have occurred around 3 am. The fire could be extinguished without requiring fire-fighter intervention as a result of the rupture (due to the effect of heat radiation) of a pressurised water pipeline running in the nearby boiler room. Fire-fighters did ensure that the firebox was no longer present. The extinction and washing water used on the premises was channelled and disposed by the bung towards the lagoons of the site’s industrial effluent treatment unit (preliminary purification of effluents by means of lagooning prior to spreading).
The production building was damaged, and production had to be stopped for about 10 days and a specialised firm called in to dispose of the eggs and other egg-related products capable of being contaminated by the smoke. The Classified Facilities Inspectorate recorded these events on 24th November. Operations at the effluent pre-treatment plant were interrupted, and communication networks between the basins were disconnected. The various potential sources of extinction and washing water pollution of the premises were identified, thus making it possible to develop a sampling plan. The confined sludge and effluent were then spread subsequent to positive quality analyses.
Given the deformation in the electrical component support grid and the state of the metal envelope on the electrical control box, the fire would have followed heating of one of the components. The operator had not performed any periodic inspections or thermographic testing (detection of abnormal heating) of the facility’s electrical installations.
Subsequent to this fire, the operator planned on installing higher-quality M1 (non-flammable) or M0 (non-combustible) sandwich panels, along with automatic detection and extinction systems in some of the premises and electrical control boxes, in addition to conducting an annual inspection of electrical installations plus an additional periodic control by means of infrared thermography.
